Installing a Linux virtual machine

There are a variety of ways to install a Linux system. For example, if you are cur-rently running Windows as your primary operating system, then you may be able to dual boot Linux alongside Windows, but this method is not beginner-friendly. Any error in the installation process may cause you a lot of headaches, and in some cases, you won't even be able to boot Windows anymore! I want to save you a lot of pain and agony, so I am going to show you how to install Linux as a virtual machine.

WHAT IS A VIRTUAL MACHINE?

A virtual machine is simply a computer running from within another computer (host). A virtual machine shares the host resources and behaves exactly like a standalone physical machine.

You can also have nested virtual machines, which means that you can run a virtual machine from within another virtual machine.

The process of installing a virtual machine is straightforward; you only need to follow the following steps:

1. Install VirtualBox (or VMware Player).
2. Download an ISO image of any Linux distribution.
3. Open up VirtualBox and begin the installation process.

The first step is to install VirtualBox, which is a cross-platform virtualization appli-cation that will allow us to create virtual machines. VirtualBox is free, and it works on macOS, Windows, and Linux. A quick Google search: VirtualBox download will get the job done. If you are feeling a bit lazy, you can download VirtualBox at the following link: www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads.

After you have installed VirtualBox, you now need to download an ISO image of any Linux distribution. For this book, you will be using Ubuntu, which is arguably the most popular Linux distribution among beginners. You can download Ubuntu at the following link: www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop.

I recommend that you download the latest Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) ver-sion as it is well tested and has better support.

For the last step, you need to open VirtualBox and create a Linux virtual ma-chine with the Ubuntu ISO image you have downloaded from Step 2.

When you open VirtualBox, you have to select New from the menu bar.

Figure 2: Creating a New Virtual Machine

Then you need to choose the name and type of your new virtual machine.

Figure 3: Choose Name and Type

After that, click on Continue and select how much memory you want to give to your virtual machine. I highly recommend 2 GB (gigabytes) or more. For example, here in the following screenshot, I chose to give my virtual machine 4096 MB of memory (RAM), which is equivalent to 4 GB.

Figure 4: Choose Memory Size

After that, click on Continue and make sure that Create a virtual hard disk now is selected, as shown in the following screenshot, then click on Create.

Figure 5: Create a Hard Disk

After that, choose VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image) as shown in the following screenshot, then click on Continue.

Figure 6: Hard Disk File Type

Now select Dynamically allocated, as shown in the following screenshot, then click on Continue.

Figure 7: Storage on Physical Hard Disk

Now you can select the hard disk size of your virtual machine. I highly recommend you choose 10 GB or higher. Here in the following screenshot, I chose 20 GB for my virtual machine.

Figure 8: Hard Disk Size

After selecting the hard disk size, click on Create to finish creating your virtual machine.

Figure 9: Virtual Machine Is Created

You can click on the green Start button to launch your virtual machine. You will then have to select a start-up disk, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 10: Select Start-Up Disk

Choose the Ubuntu ISO image that you have downloaded and then click on Start to launch the Ubuntu Installer, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 11: Ubuntu Installer

You can now select Install Ubuntu. Next, you will have to choose the language and the keyboard layout. After that, you should keep accepting the defaults.

You will eventually come to the step of creating a new user, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 12: Create a New User

I chose the username elliot because I am a big fan of the TV Show Mr. Robot and for the fact that Elliot was using Linux while he was casually hacking E Corp! I highly recommend you choose elliot as your username as it will make it easier for you to follow along with the book.

You can then click on Continue, and the system installation will begin, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 13: System Installation

The installation process will take a few minutes. Hang on there or make yourself a cup of coffee or something while the installation finishes.

You will have to restart your virtual machine when the installation is complete, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 14: Installation Complete

You can click on Restart Now. After that, it may ask you to remove the installation medium, which you can do by selecting Devices -+ Optical Drives -+ Remove disk from virtual drive.

Finally, you should see your Sign In screen, as shown in the following screenshot.

Figure 15: Ubuntu Sign In

You can now enter your password and hooray! You are now inside of a Linux sys-tem.

There are other ways you can use to experiment with a Linux system. For ex-ample, you can create an account on AWS (Amazon Web Services) and launch a Linux virtual machine on an Amazon EC2 instance. Likewise, you can create a Linux virtual machine on Microsoft Azure. So consider yourself lucky to be living in this day and age! Back in the day, it was a painful process to get up and running with Linux.