One of the utilities VirtualBox is to test an operating system (for example, a distribution of GNU / Linus) without having it installed in our real machine. So, if we like your running in a virtual machine, we can put the installation on our team. To install a distribution that we want to try on a virtual machine, you have two options:
- Go to the website of the OS / distribution you want to test, get us your CD / DVD installation through the file. "Iso" provided, and install it on a virtual machine (new or existing).
- Download us an image of virtual hard disk recognized by VirtualBox, which has already installed the OS, and use it directly from a virtual machine (making use of a new or already have).
This second option is very good, because through it we can skip the process of installing the OS on the virtual machine, and go right to test its performance, which is what interests us. For Internet, we can find many images of hard disk systems preinstalled. For example, many find the page VirtualBox Images. On this page there are images not only with Linux distributions, but distributions with GNU / SunOS, BSD and some other (eg the mythical Minix). To make this explanation, for example, I downloaded the image of FreeBSD 7.1 with XFCE, one of the most popular BSD distributions (along with OpenBSD). The downloaded image is compressed with 7z format. Since the Nautilus can decompress it with the left button and clicking "Extract here ...".
Removing file .7 z
Once uncompressed, we recorded the image in VirtualBox. To do this we open the VirtualBox from "Applications> System Tools> VirtualBox" and in this program, go to "File> Manager of digital media." We click "Add" and select the file extension. "VDI" that has resulted from the previous extraction.
Manager supports virtual
Once registered, return to the main screen of VirtualBox. We have two options. Or create a new virtual machine that uses this image, or use this image on a virtual machine exists. In this case, explain how to reuse a virtual machine. Choose the virtual machine to another, and we click the "Settings". Let the "Disk Drives" as a "primary IDE master" choose the image you just recorded.
Select Image
Accepted the changes and start the virtual machine. That the actual operating system that we chose. If we ask user and password, we can get the same page where we found the image.
FreeBSD in virtual machine
You see, this is an easy way to test a distribution in a virtual machine without having to go through the installation process.
Hey, I never knew this could be done. Always a little lazy having to install an operating system. I do not normally do, but now you've explained this alternative with the Virtual Box, perhaps to try m'animaré operating systems that do not know.
Yeah, makes it very easy.
Apart, this also serves to level "internal". That is, if you have a Windows virtual machine (for example) with some programs installed that much fun, you can make a backup of your file. "VDI". So if someday you should reinstall it Windows, simply return the backup and will have already prepared for work.
Highly useful! Kubuntu, I was there!