Installing linux for use with a virtual pc.

[luciusad2004]

Hey guys. I've been in the mood to dabble with linux lately but i'm afraid of formating my hard disk. I got a liscence of windows xp from my school but it was a one time thing, so i can't risk hosing the install.

If i install a virtual machine do i still have to format and partition my drive or does it run from a directory or disk image of some sort? I have to admit that I don't really know anything about virtualization. Also, do i have worry about Boot loaders and all of the typical things associated with dual booting xp and linux? I guess a nice link to a good source for information about running linux in a virtual environment in windows would be good... now that i think about it, google will give me a lot of those so ill check there in to.

Thanks

[D1337]

its just going to eat up space like a normal application you download and modify, so no theirs no partitioning. you dont need to know about dual booting, unless you try to dual boot a virtual machine... which is just stupid.

virtual machine is VERY easy to use. I wont provide a link but feel free to ask Q's

[luciusad2004]

Thanks, Ill look in to it and post up any questions i have. Hopefully this time my idea will get off the ground.

Thanks again.

[calumc]

I think wubi is the right idea for you, or even just try some live disks

[luciusad2004]

I think wubi is the right idea for you, or even just try some live disks

Ooooooo. Thank you. I may try that tonight. This just runs as an application inside of windows?

[calumc]

yep

[.Maleficus.]

VMware! Virtualization at its finest!

[luciusad2004]

The wubi install went flawlessly. i started it up, went trick or treating (actually just went walking around town and got maybe two handfuls of candy along the way), came home and rebooted. It set everything up for me and now im in Xubuntu.

I chose xubuntu because my machine is sort of weak.

Ill keep VMWare in mind when i get a more powerful machine. Once i get a job i might bump this lady up to 1 Gig of ram and MAYBE buy a dedicated graphix card. I'm hesitant because i don't really want to drop money on an AGP card, but at the same time... if i buy a new motherboard in order to get PCI xpress, i wouldn't buy one compatible with my current processor.

The one thing i don't get is this... how is this running? It doesn't seem to be in a virtual machine. It boots up like a dual boot system but its on a virtual drive? It really confuses me... but im not trying to learn how this works. I just want to finally learn to use Linux.

Overall i am pleased. And XFCE seems nice at first glance.

Thanks guys.

[.Maleficus.]

It's not virtual. If it were virtual you'd be running it inside Windows.

Good luck with Xubuntu though! It's pretty great (and what my server's running).

[luciusad2004]

So now that i have everything running, were do i go from here... how do i go about learning how to work with Linux? I signed up on the Ubuntu forums a while ago, I suppose i could just browse around there for a while?