By Ean McDonald

VirtualBox is what is called a “Type 2 Hypervisor” which is essentially a technical name for being able to run another computer INSIDE your current operating system. This works great whether you’re on Windows or Linux. I assume it works great on Mac, but I haven’t tried it personally.

<aside> 🧑‍💻 For VirtualBox to work well, it’s best if your host system has at least 8GB of RAM. When you create a virtual machine, it will have to use a share of the RAM on your computer, and you’ll still need some for your host operating system on your computer.

If you’re running Windows 10, you won’t want to give the virtual machine so much that it leaves your computer with less than 4GB of RAM, but ideally no less than 8GB. Linux is more forgiving.

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1. You’ll want to download VirtualBox:
   1. https://www.virtualbox.org/
   2. If you’re running Linux, you may find VirtualBox is already in your application manager/package manager
   3. Let us know if you need help installing VirtualBox - Contact Us
2. You will also want to have an .iso file for an operating system. If you don’t have any particular OS in mind, you could try one of our favourites, MX Linux. I like the KDE version, but XFCE is great too.
3. In VirtualBox, select New

1. Fill out the information in the next screen. Name this machine whatever you want, although I usually put in the operating system at least. It’s just how you want to differentiate your machines if you might have multiple eventually.

For Type and Version, just get as close as you can. In this example they don’t have MX listed under Linux, but it’s in the Debian family. I’m pretty sure this just affects the logo VirtualBox pastes on it.

Click Next when you’re done.

1. Here, we’re deciding how much of a share of your computer’s RAM this virtual machine is going to use. Keep in mind that while this machine is running, your host system won’t have access to what you reserve here. My computer has a fair amount of RAM so I can type in 4096 for 4GB (that’s 4 x 1024), and my host operating system is still going to have plenty of RAM to spare. Depending on your computer you may want to only try 1024 or 2048 (1 or 2GB).

This can be adjusted later if need be. Click Next when this is set.

1. Here I always just create new virtual hard disks for each one of my machines to keep things neat, but there may be situations where you want them to share a virtual hard disk file. Hit Create.

1. For Hard disk file type, I’ve always stuck with VDI since I exclusively use VirtualBox at the moment. If you get to a point where you’re using multiple hypervisors, one of the other file types may be more suitable for compatibility. Click Next after you’ve selected one.

1. Choosing how the storage space works is sort of neat. Fixed size works how you’d expect it would. My understanding of dynamically allocated is, if you enter in 100GB of reserved space, it will only technically use as much is needed up to that 100GB. Click Next.