How to Install Ubuntu Virtual Machine on Windows

Introduction

In this section, I will show you how to install Ubuntu on Windows using VM VirtualBox.

Requirements

before we continue you will need to:

Let’s Begin

First, we will need a .iso image of Ubuntu. If you’ve ever installed an operating system back in the day. You would have used an Optical Disk Image that contained the image of an OS (Operating System). What we are doing here is downloading the Ubuntu OS as an image, that we will then load on a virtual machine to run a secondary OS on our computer. If you are here, you probably know what a Virtual Machine is, but just in case. A Virtual Machine is an OS that runs on top of your current OS. It uses your physical computer like RAM, SSD, CPU, and GPU. I like to think of it as a computer inside your computer.

Ubuntu Download

Okay, so we need a .iso image of Ubuntu, we get that from https://Ubuntu.com/download/desktop.

VM VirtualBox Setup

After downloading your preferred Ubuntu image, open VM VirtualBox.

Click “New” (the blue spiky circle in the middle), This will bring up the prompt below called “Create Virtual Machine”. Here you have to name your Virtual Machine (you can name it anything!). In “Machine Folder”, make sure you select a folder with plenty of storage. For example, I am using a folder from storage “D:”. I will further explain why in the next step. “Type”, select Linux, and “Version” select Ubuntu. Now some computer systems are x64, but when you get to this window, you will not get the option. To enable, you will need to activate it through your BIOS or System Settings. I would recommend searching for your computer brand on google and ask how to enable virtualization.

VM VirtualBox Memory (RAM)

After you are done with that, select the “Memory size” you want. what this is referring to is RAM. Remember, more RAM = Faster Processing, less RAM = slower Processing. Though make sure not to use up all the RAM, your computer still needs some too. Select “Create a virtual hard disk now” and click “create.

After creating virtual machine, you are presented with this prompt below called “Create Virtual Hard Disk”. This is where you allocate some of your actual physical storage memory, and give it to this Virtual Machine. “File Location”, here you need to see where you want to store this Virtual Machine in you file system. Once you are done with that, we get to the fun part. “File Size” this is where we select how much Physical Storage, we are giving this virtual machine, in this case I am giving it 51.36GB (I know, that’s huge! but you don’t need to give it that much. you can get away with 20GB, or even less if you don’t plan on running heavy programs. Select “VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image)” and select “Dynamically allocated (meaning you can change the size of storage later on)”. Now just click “Create” and you are done! just kidding.

VM VirtualBox Storage

Successfully Created VM

Nonetheless Congrats! you have now successfully created a Virtual Machine, sort of. To continue, press “Start” (the green arrow), this will turn on your newly created machine.

Once fired up, you will get this weird prompt asking to select a “Start-up Disk”. This is where you need that .iso Ubuntu file that we downloaded at the beginning of this post. Find it in your file system. It might give you a prompt called “Optical Disk Selector”, here just click on “Create New” and it will take you to your file system. Once done click “Start”.

Locate Ubuntu .IOS Image

Congrats!

Ubuntu Install Walkthrough (quick)

And you are in! Here just follow the Basic Install Process after selecting “Install Ubuntu”.

This is where you will be met with this page. It may take a while depending on what install method was selected during Basic Install Process.

And the install is now COMPLETE! after a restart of course.

Fullscreen Mode

Now, quickly you may find yourself wanting Ubuntu to operate in full screen mode due to words or icons being too small. Just to quickly realize Ubuntu is unable to resize inside the Virtual Machine. As I struggled searching for solution, and though it did not take long at all to find it. I will add the solution here, to save you some time. First select the “Devices” Tab (I circled it in red), on the drop down select “Insert Guest Additions CD Image”. This will bring up a prompt, select “Run”. After this it will bring up the famous Linux Terminal, you don’t need to do anything. Once complete, the terminal will prompt you to press Enter on your keyboard to exit.

Now just restart your computer, and that is it! now you can enjoy Ubuntu in full screen mode whenever.

How to Hide White Tabs

Bonus: to hide the white tabs on top, select the View Tab, and click on “Full Screen Mode”. This is the end result (not too bad, if I say so myself).

Conclusion