Linux Test Drive With VirtualBox — Step-By-Step Instructions
By: Chris Christensen
Tags: Virtualbox, Tutorial, Linux, Ubuntu, Ubuntu Desktop

Create Your First Virtual Machine

15. Open VirtualBox

VirtualBox

16. In the right-side panel above the “Welcome to VirtualBox!” heading are five choices. Click on the blue “New” button.

17. Enter a name for your virtual machine. This can be anything you want but with any naming convention make it meaningful. You never know. You might fall in love with creating virtual machines and spin up a dozen of them. Meaningful names help you tell them apart.

18. If you type in “Ubuntu”, VirtualBox will automatically change the type to “Linux” and the Version to “Ubuntu (64-bit).” If you use another name, make sure to click on “Type” and change it to “Linux” and “Version” and change it to “Ubuntu (64-bit).”

19. The next step is to choose how much memory you want your virtual machine to use. The recommended amount of 1024 MB is fine and can be changed later on if you want to add more.

20. Next up is the disk for the virtual machine. Just like a physical computer, a virtual machine needs a disk for storage.

21. Click “Create” to start the process of creating the virtual hard disk.

22. The next page will ask for the type of hard disk. The default “VDI” is fine.

23. The next screen will ask if you want to use a “Dynamically allocated” or “Fixed size” disk. Dynamically allocated disks grow as you need them to grow. For instance, if you set the disk up with 80 GB of disk space but choose to dynamically allocate that disk space, VirtualBox will only use as much space as it needs until it hits 80 GB. On the other hand, fixed size will reserve the entire 80 GB from the beginning. The default dynamically allocated is fine and my preferred choice.

24. Next up is the size of the disk. You don’t need a lot of disk space to take Ubuntu Linux for a test drive. I allocated 60 GB of disk space because I plan on using my virtual machine for something that requires this. Keep in mind that you can always delete the virtual machine and recover back any disk space that it takes up.

25. Once the disk is created you are returned to VirtualBox main screen. Your new virtual machine should be highlighted. Click on the yellow “Settings” button in the right-hand panel.

26. We are going to make a few changes to the virtual machine to optimize performance. We also need to tell the virtual machine to use the Ubuntu Linux ISO image that we downloaded earlier.

27. Click on “System” in the left-hand panel. Click on the “Processor” tab. Move the processor toggle to the end of the green. In my case, this was four CPUs. This is not necessary but will give you a bit more processing power with your virtual machine.

28. Next click on “Display” in the left-hand panel. Move the “Video Memory” toggle all the way to the end. This will give you 128 MB of video memory. You won’t be doing any hardcore gaming with this setting but it gives a bit better video performance.

29. Click on “Storage” in the left-hand panel and then click on the disk icon with “Empty” next to it.

30. In the attributes section in the right-hand panel click on the disk icon with the down arrow on it.

31. Note that my screenshot already shows “ubuntu-18.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso.” You will only see “Choose Virtual Optical Disk File…” when you click on this. Click on “Choose Virtual Optical Disk File…” and locate the Ubuntu Linux ISO image that we downloaded earlier.

32. Where it said “Empty” before, it now shows the image we downloaded.

33. We are done making changes to the configuration. You can click “OK.”

34. You should be back on main screen for Virtualbox. Go ahead and double-click on your virtual machine to launch it. After an initial boot up you should see the following screen.

35. Click on “Install Ubuntu.” On the next screen you can click continue unless you prefer a different language than English.

36. The default settings for “Updates and other software” are fine. Since this is a virtual machine there is no need to install third-party software for graphics and wifi.

37. We are not going to do any special partition and encryption and LVM (Logical Volume Manager) are probably overkill for a test drive so go ahead and click “Install Now.”

38. You will see a warning that if you continue the disk will be erased. It is safe to click “Continue.”

39. Next up is your time zone. You can click your location on the map or type in a location in the box that currently says “New York.”

40. The next screen is to setup your user account. You can put anything you’d like for these.

41. Finally the installation begins!

42. The installation will take a few minutes. When it is finished you will see a message to restart.

43. After clicking on “Restart Now” you will see another message to remove the disk and click enter. There is no disk to remove so you can just hit enter.

44. After reboot you should be presented with the Ubuntu login screen.