Creating a Ubuntu 20.04 Virtual Machine in Windows


This guide comes off the back of the Xiaomi OpenWrt Guide, a few people asked me to create a Windows version of that guide and I tried, I tried for about 4 hours to get the exploit to work on windows and when I finally managed to get it to work I had no idea how many steps would be needed to reproduce what I’d done, either way, it’s still a lot simpler to do on Linux (Ubuntu in this case). So I decided instead of dragging people through a 4-hour video that I’m not confident in, why not make a quick simple guide to setting up a VM (Virtual Machine) in Windows to give users all the advantages of Linux without having to deal with dual booting and the slightly more complicated side of Linux (By the way, all these things have got a lot easier in the last few years!)

I wrote the Guide for the latest LTS (Long term support) of Ubuntu 20.04, however, you could follow this guide for almost any Linux flavour (except Arch, but if you were using Arch you would have told us already!)

Sorry I can’t resist an Arch Meme

I use Virtual box in this example, works perfectly well for what most people need and best of all it’s free! All we need then is a Ubuntu image which is also free to download. A lot of different Linux flavours provide VM images that you can just import into Virtual Box, however, I looked quickly and couldn’t find one for Ubuntu, and even if I did I normally install for myself in the process outlined, that way you have all your own usernames and passwords out of the box, the main disadvantage is they sometimes come with additional software installed that allows for a little bit more compatibility, for instance being able to share a clipboard between Windows and Linux. To overcome this you simply need to click the Devices tab > Insert Guest Additions CD Image… > And follow the instructions to install the additional software.

If you find after the initial install and reboot you find yourself back in the Ubuntu installer you may need to remove the virtual disc by right-clicking the CD icon in the lower corner and deselecting Ubuntu.iso.

In most of our other guides, you will see us use the terminal, you can search for this using the boxes icon in the lower-left corner and then type “terminal” or a quicker way is to press Ctrl + Alt + T. Some other beginner tips, If you need to run a command as Administrator you start the command with sudo, (short for superuser do) you will need to type your password to do this and it catches a lot of people out but your password isn’t displayed when typed in the terminal (for obvious reasons!).

Some simple commands to get you started on linux are:

sudo apt update

sudo apt upgrade

These two commands will install the latest updates for your OS.

Although I’ve mentioned the terminal, most people could use Ubuntu without ever needing to open the terminal, my wife for instance has been using it for 10 years and never needed it once!

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