Installing Ubuntu Desktop into the Virtual Machine

July 1, 2016August 21, 2016 Dmitry ZinchenkoLinux, Ubuntu, VirtualBox

In this post I will share how to install Ubuntu Desktop into VirtualBox and what versions worked for me.

Note: this post is a part of the series of posts about my experience using Ubuntu Desktop for software development.

UPDATE: after working with different combinations of VirtualBox and Ubuntu Desktop I found that the following versions/build work very well with each other:

Downloading Guest Operating System – Ubuntu Desktop

The current version of Ubuntu Desktop at the time of writing is 16.04 LTS. LTS stands for “long term support” which means Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu distribution, will provide feature and security updates for a number of years. You can download Ubuntu Desktop following this link, and choose either 32- or 64-bit PC (AMD) desktop image (I’ve got 64-bit Ubuntu Desktop version 16.04.1).

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Creating a Virtual Machine

July 1, 2016August 21, 2016 Dmitry ZinchenkoVirtualBox1 Comment

In this post I will share how to create and minimally configure a Virtual Machine on VirtualBox.

Note: this post is a part of the series of posts about my experience using Ubuntu Desktop for software development.

Creating And Configuring Virtual Machine

After starting VirtualBox application you will be greeted with Oracle VM VirtualBox Manager. As you can see on the following image – I already have Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 created but we’ll create a new one from scratch.

Hit the New button on VirtualBox Manager and in Name and operating system provide the following information:

Name: Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop Blog (or choose your own)
Type: Linux
Version: Ubuntu (64-bit)
Memory size: 2048MB (you can keep the default 768MB and increase the size later)
(*) Create a virtual hard disk now

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Installing VirtualBox

July 1, 2016August 21, 2016 Dmitry ZinchenkoVirtualBox

In this post I will share how to install VirtualBox and what version worked for me.

Note: this post is a part of the series of posts about my experience using Ubuntu Desktop for software development.

UPDATE: after working with different combinations of VirtualBox and Ubuntu Desktop I found that the following versions/build work very well with each other:

Downloading VirtualBox

You can download the latest version of VirtualBox following this link. After you download the DMG file, just double click on it and follow the installation instructions. It does not require any setup after installation.

My Choice of Hardware, Host Operating System, Virtualization Product and Linux Distribution

July 1, 2016July 2, 2016 Dmitry ZinchenkoLinux, Mac OS X, MacBook Pro, Ubuntu, VirtualBox

Note: this post is a part of the series of posts about my experience using Ubuntu Desktop for software development.

My Choice Of Hardware

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts – almost a year ago I got MacBook Pro and it proved to be a terrific choice.

My Choice of Host Operating System

Since I’m using MacBook Pro, my obvious choice for the host operating system is Mac OS X. Even though I love Mac OS X and like the development experience on it, for experimenting with new technologies I prefer using virtual machines (VMs). The reason is simple – if something goes wrong – it would take me long time to reinstall (or restore from backup) Mac OS X and applications I use. But with virtual machines everything is expendable – create virtual machine, instal operating system, SDKs, tools, etc., use it and when you done – just delete it if you do not need it any longer. The huge benefit – your primary operating system stays intact.

My Choice Of Virtualization Product

Initially I was a happy user of Parallels Desktop until they rolled out update 11.1.2 which made a lot of people angry and made me to roll back to version 11.1.1 and reinstall all of the guest operating systems. As a result – I started looking for alternatives and now VirtualBox is my virtualization product of choice.

My Choice of Linux Distribution

There is no shortage of Linux Distributions. Currently I’m experimenting with Ubuntu Desktop 16.04 LTS, but I’m open to experiment with the others as well.

See Also

Installing VirtualBox

Using Ubuntu Desktop for Software Development

July 1, 2016August 30, 2016 Dmitry ZinchenkoLinux, Mac OS X, Ubuntu, VirtualBox

In this series of post I will share my experience using Ubuntu Desktop for software development. I plan to experiment with many different tools, languages, editors, development environments, SDKs, etc., so the posts will include various installation and setup steps which I plan to keep short and mostly independent of each other.

Installation And Configuration