How to Run Linux in a Virtual Desktop

VIRTUAL PC - WHAT IT IS

Virtual PC has been around for some time now, with the latest version being Virtual PC 2007. While the term virtual machine thrown around a bit, it's important to make the distinction: Virtual PC creates a virtual machine on your computer, but Virtual PC is the software created by Microsoft to perform that task. Some will be surprised to hear that Virtual PC is free, the full download is available from Microsoft's website.

There are a few issues to note when preparing to Install Virtual PC:

First, ensure that you have the correct version of Windows installed. According to the download page over at www.microsoft.com, Virtual PC will run on Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate, Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. They make no mention of any of the Home editions of Windows.

Second, you must take into consideration the hardware requirements, the RAM and disk space needs for both the host operating system and the system you run in Virtual PC must be added together to determine your total system requirements. Don't worry however, as you can get Linux installs that take up very little space and require little overhead.

Lastly, don't worry too much about processor speed. According to the requirements listed by Microsoft, Virtual PC 2007 will run on AMD Athlon/Duron or Intel Celeron/Pentium II processors. Essentially, if your processor can handle XP or Vista, you're good to go with the CPU requirement.

VIRTUALBOX - THE COMPETITION

VirtualBox is Sun Microsystem's answer to VirtualPC. Their version is also free and unlike Virtual PC 2007, it is published under the GNU General Public License. For those of you that don't know, this means that not only do you get the program for free, but the source code is available as well, just like Linux. This is handy because the general public can alter the source code to offer improvements or fix bugs for their specific application.

VIRTUAL MACHINE - WHY BOTHER?

Some of you are already asking, I'm sure, why you would need to install a virtual machine. The answers are many and varied but I can think of a few very good ones. I, for example, found Virtual PC when taking a class at the local college. For our class we needed to install Linux just to get some experience with it. The college I attend however, does not have PC's dedicated for any one class and installing a dual-boot or single-boot Linux setup was out of the question. Our instructor led us instead to Microsoft's website to download Virtual PC and we had Linux up and running in about an hour, and then were able to simply delete the Linux install and uninstall Virtual PC when it was time to leave.

Another reason that many people install Linux in a virtual machine is to run a program called Folding@Home. This software, for those of you that have not heard about it yet, is a project started at Stanford University to research protein folding and the way that it relates to different diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, cancer, and many others. The way it works is simple, you download a "work unit" from Stanford's servers and your PC uses it's idle cycles (time the CPU is sitting idle) to compute and simulate the protein folding. Once the work unit is finished, it sends the results back to Stanford for analysis, more info can be found here. If you're interested in folding for the Bjorn3D.com team, use the team number 41608 when you set up your client. The reason that people like to use Linux to do the work is one of speed. The Linux client, for some time, was much faster than the Windows client. With the GPU client that has been released, that has largely been overcome because Linux does not have a GPU client yet. However, the list of supported GPU's is still fairly short and if you do not have one on the list, you're stuck with the CPU client, which runs faster in Linux.

Finally, for people like me, it allows you another way to tinker with your PC. The great thing, perhaps the greatest thing, about Virtual PC is that you can tinker all you want, and you're not going to permanently alter your computer. This is especially nice because every Operating System around requires its own HDD partition, Virtual PC simply creates a folder on your hard drive instead of an actual partition, but the virtual machine sees it as a partition.

VIRTUAL MACHINE - INSTALLATION

Installing Virtual PC, or VirtualBox for that matter is simple. The first step, of course, is to go get it, click here for the Virtual PC 2007 download page or here for the VirtualBox site. Once you've got it downloaded simply run the file, choose a destination location and off you go! It's a fast, simple installation.

Today we will guide you through the VirtualBox installation. The reasons for choosing Sun's solution over Microsoft's is simple, it works. I tried Virtual PC 2007 first, and there are other guides out there with command line parameters to add to your Linux install to make it work. I tried their solutions which just raised other problems, then I tried VirtualBox. It installed correctly, the first time, with little to no specialized knowledge of Linux. Read on to see just how easy Sun has made it...