When you are just getting started on your Linux journey, you typically wonder: “Which flavor of Linux should I start with”? Theoretically you can start with whatever distribution you fancy: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Manjaro, etc. You can also just keep on running Linux in a virtual machine. For example on an old PC, as dual-boot on your current PC or on a Raspberry PI. Once you learned the basics, you can always continue by installing it on real hardware. For those new to Linux, I highly recommend installing it first as a VirtualBox virtual machine. If something goes wrong, you simply delete the virtual machine and just try again. No risk of messing up your host operating system. We’ll call this one the guest operating machine.Īs such, VirtualBox is perfect for experimenting with Linux. Inside this virtual machine, you can install another operating system, for example a flavor of Linux. We’ll call this one the host operating system.Īfter you installed the VirtualBox application on your host operating system, you can create a new virtual machine (VM) in VirtualBox. Hmm…what does this mean? Simply put, VirtualBox is an application that enables you to install another operating system, within your current operating system.

If you look up the definition of VirtualBox, you’ll find something along the lines of “VirtualBox is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor for x86 virtualization”. That way there is zero risk of messing up your current operating system. We’ll use VirtualBox to install Ubuntu as a virtual machine. I picked the Ubuntu distribution, because it is a popular and beginner-friendly Linux based operating system. In this article, you’ll learn step-by-step how to install Ubuntu as a VirtualBox virtual machine. Interested in giving Linux a try? Then you came to the right place.

Virtualbox ubuntu server 20.04