Do you want to install a flavor of Linux while enjoy the ease of use of Microsoft Windows, worry no more this article will guide you in doing so. Long gone are the days when you have to reserve a separate EXT2 partition for installing Linux. In this tutorial I have installed Ubuntu 8.10 on Microsoft Vista Home Premium Edition. The method is generic in nature and you can install any operating system in any other operating system :-)

First thing you need is a virtual machine software. There are lots of free software available that create a virtual machine for you. As the name suggests a virtual machine is software that emulates hardware, in other words it is a separate PC having its own resources. However all the resources of the virtual machine are subset of resources available to the parent/host operating system. A parent/host operating system (OS) is the OS in which you are installing a virtual machine. For example in my case it is Windows Vista and child or guest operating system will be ubuntu.

For setting up a virtual machine I have used VMware Workstation v6.0.4, the choice of software is yours and you can select other alternatives as well. First step is to install VMware with typical settings and restart the host operating system to finalize the installation.

Creating and Setting up a Virtual Machine

Click on the VMWare shortcut and select "New Virtual Machine"

A wizard will open which will guide you through rest of the process.

Press next to continue. Select "Typical" in the virtual machine configuration.

Press Next button to continue. Select the guest Operating System Type, in this case its Linux and Ubuntu. If you are using core2duo or any other 64-bit processor than you can choose 64-bit version of Ubuntu from options.

Press Next, in the next window you can select name and location of your virtual machine. When you are done press next button.

In Network Connection select "Use Bridged Networking"

In disk capacity specify space greater than or equal to 8 GB. Recommended is 10GB or greater. Select allocate space now id you have sufficient amount of disk space. This trick will boost performance of the child operating system. Press finish to complete, it will take some time if you chose to allocate disk space now.

You will see the following confirmation message that "Virtual machine created successfully"

Now, you will find following options of right side of your VMware application.

Optimizing Virtual Machine for Best Performance (Optional)

You need to do some modifications here. First I would like to increase memory (RAM), my recommendation is half of the free memory available is your host operating system. For example I have 4GB RAM, Vista is taking almost 2 GB, so I am selecting 1GB so than I am still able to run applications is vista while the child OS is running. However please not that the memory should not be greater than the maximum memory, this may cause the child OS to slow down.

Now select Edit Virtual Machine Settings to remove the floppy drive as it wont be used.

Just like modifying RAM you can also choose the number of processors. I have a dual core system so I am selecting two processors.

Installing Ubuntu

Now you require a Ubuntu installation CD, I had an ISO image so I will be using it instead. Double clink the CD-ROM option in the VMware main window.

Now, select the Use ISO image and Browse the ISO file. If you have a Ubuntu CD you do not need to do this steap.

Now you need to boot from newly configured system, just clink on any one of the play buttons.

You may see a information message, just ignore it for now.

Now in language selection select desired language, from installation options select "Install Ubuntu"

Follow rest of the installation screens they are quuite easy and self explanatory. In the Prepare Disk Space screen select the first option which is Guided - use entire disk.

After completing the wizard steps you will be prompted to restart system, remove/eject the disk and restart to your virtual machine. Here is my Vista running Ubuntu, ubuntu's screen can also be maximized to view in full screen mode also called the exclusive mode.

 An any time you can shutdown ubuntu or press stop button to stop the virtual machine.