Hi, everyone. Kevin here. Today we're going to look at how you can both install and also
run Oracle's VirtualBox. VirtualBox is free and open-source software that allows you to set up
your very own virtual machine. A virtual machine is kind of like a pretend computer or a guest that
runs on your real computer or the host. So why would you want to do that? With a virtual machine,
you can install other operating systems like maybe an older version of Windows,
or maybe you want to experiment with Linux, or maybe you want to install software that doesn't
work on your host machine, like, let's say, an older computer game. It's basically like having
a computer within your computer. Let's check out how to do this. Before we can install VirtualBox,
you need to make sure that virtualization is turned on on your computer. I'm on a Windows PC,
and I'll press Control, Shift, Escape. This opens up Task Manager, and over on the left-hand side,
let's click into Performance, and at the very top, make sure that you click into CPU.
Right down here, you can see virtualization and whether it's enabled or disabled. Mine is
currently enabled. If virtualization is disabled on your PC, don't worry,
it's fairly easy to turn on, but it does require going through your BIOS. To get to your BIOS,
first off, restart your PC. As your computer's restarting, you'll need to press the hotkey that
brings you into the BIOS, and that depends on the brand of the computer that you have. Typically,
it's the Escape key, or it could be F2, or it could be the Delete key. So, you'll need to look
that up. I have a Dell computer, and it happens to be F2. This drops me into the BIOS, and up on top,
I'll switch over into the Advanced tab, and here, I see virtualization. If it's disabled,
you can change it to Enabled. Once you're all done, Escape. Now that we have virtualization
enabled, next, we need to install VirtualBox. Head to the following website. You can also click on
the card in the top right-hand corner. On this web page, let's click on this very prominent download
button for VirtualBox 7.0. That's currently the most recent version. Right here, you can choose
what operating system you have on your computer. I'm running a Windows PC, so I'll select Windows
hosts. However, you can also install this on Mac or even on Linux, and you have a few other options
as well. I'll click on Windows, and this now kicks off the download. Once you finish downloading,
kick off the install. Right here, let's click on Next. On this screen, you can define all of the
features that you want to install. I'll stick with all of the defaults and then click on Next.
Right here, we get a warning that it'll temporarily remove us or disconnect us
from the network. Let's click on Yes. And here, it also calls out missing dependencies. We need
these to proceed with the install, so let's click on Yes. And lastly, let's click on Install. It'll
now go through and install VirtualBox. And look at that, the install is all done. I'll check this box
to start the VM, then let's click on Finish. Now that we have VirtualBox running, next,
we need to get an ISO for the operating system that we would like to run on our virtual machine.
An ISO file is just a complete copy of all of the data that you would find on, say, a CD, a DVD,
or a Blu-ray disc. For example, if you want to install Windows 10, you would need to find the
ISO file for Windows 10. In this video, I'm going to download the ISO for Ubuntu. That's the most
popular Linux distribution. To install Ubuntu, head to the following website. You could click
on the card in the top right-hand corner, or also the link down below in the description. On the top
navigation, let's click on Download, and over on the left-hand side, let's select Ubuntu Desktop.
This drops me on the Download page, and let's scroll down just a little bit. I'm going to
install this version right here. One thing to note is there are some recommended system requirements.
When we set up our virtual machine, we'll want to make sure that it at least matches these
requirements. Over on the right-hand side, let's click on Download. I've now finished downloading
Ubuntu, and I've launched the VirtualBox Manager. This is what we use to create, configure, and also
manage all of our virtual machines. Over on the left-hand side, here we'll see a list of all of
our virtual machines, but it's currently empty because I haven't yet made a virtual machine.
To create a new virtual machine, up on top, let's click on New. This now opens up a dialog that will
walk us through setting up our new virtual machine. First, we need to give the virtual
machine a name. I'll simply call it Ubuntu. Down here, I can specify where I want to place
my virtual machine. Make sure that you choose a location that has a sufficient amount of space.
Right down here, you'll need to navigate to where you saved your ISO image. I placed it right here.
I'll select that. And it's automatically detected the type. It's Linux and also the version, Ubuntu.
All of that looks good, so I'll click on Next. On this next screen, here you can type in your user
credentials to log into your virtual machine. You can type in a username and a password. I
would recommend changing those. And down at the bottom, you can toggle on something called guest
additions. This will give you better performance and also usability, so I would recommend turning
that on. Down below, let's click on Next. On this screen, we can specify the hardware for the
virtual machine. You can specify how much RAM the virtual machine should get and also the number of
processors. Now, keep in mind that as you allocate memory to your virtual machine, this will take it
away from the host machine. That's why you see it orange and red up near the top. If you allocate
all of your resources towards the virtual machine, your host machine will slow down considerably.
For now, I'll go with four gigabytes for the memory and for the processors, let's go with four
here. Keep in mind, you can always come in later on and you can change these values. Down below,
I'll click on Next. On this screen, you can specify how much hard disk space you want to
allocate to your virtual machine. And this is dynamic, so it'll only actually consume this
space if you end up using it on your virtual machine, unless, of course, you check this
box next to preallocate full size. You'll get some performance improvements by checking this,
but then it does use up all of the space. I would recommend sticking with dynamic and then let's
click on Next. We now see a summary of all of our different selections. Down below, let's click on
Finish. It's now powered up the virtual machine and now it's running through and installing the
operating system on this virtual machine. Now that the virtual machine has finished installing,
we can now log in. I'll select this user and then type in the password. I'm now logged into
my virtual machine, but you'll notice that the display is fairly small. Ideally, I would like
to take full advantage of all of my screen real estate. Up in the top left-hand corner, let's
click on the View menu, and right here, there's the option to auto resize the guest display.
This now adjusts it so it uses up all of this screen real estate. That's looking a lot better.
Let's go back up to the View menu, and here, there's also an option to switch into full
screen mode. I could click on this right here in the menu, but over to the right, there's also a
shortcut key that says Host + F. What is Host? If we look down in the bottom right-hand corner,
we see that it says Right Control. This is the right control key on your keyboard. If
you'd like to modify that to a different shortcut key, you can go up to the Input menu, Keyboard,
and then Keyboard Settings, and right here, you can modify the host key combination. I'll leave
it set to Right Control. I'll cancel out of this, go back up to View, and let's press Host together
with F, so the right control key together with F. Here, I get this dialog. Let's click on Switch.
And this now launches me into full screen mode on my virtual machine.
You might be wondering, well, what happened to the menu? What if I want to access some of those
different options? If we go to the very bottom of the screen, here I can access all of those same
options at the very bottom. To exit out of full screen mode, I could click on the View menu, and
here I could select this option, or we could press the Host key or Right Control key together with F,
and that now exits full screen mode. This is now a fully functional computer. Over on the left-hand
side, I have all of my different applications. Here, I have a web browser, Firefox. I also have
LibreOffice Writer, and over here, I can install additional software to my virtual machine.
Let's now go up to the top menus to see some of the more interesting functionality that you have
access to. Let's first click into the Machine menu, and right here, there's the option to
take a snapshot. This saves the state of your virtual machine at this point in time. So,
let's say you make some modifications or maybe changes, and you want to go back to a previous
state, you could do that with a snapshot. You also have something called Session Information.
When I click on that, that opens up a window very similar to what you would find in, say,
Task Manager on Windows. It shows you what your CPU usage looks like, what your RAM usage looks
like, and a number of other metrics down below. Let's go back over to the Machine menu. Down here
at the bottom, you have a few different options. You can pause, reset, or shut down your virtual
machine. Let's say that your virtual machine is consuming a lot of resources. You could pause it,
and that completely pauses the virtual machine, and then you could go back to Machine and unpause,
and that resumes it. Over here, you could reset your virtual machine. That's just like pressing
the Reset button on your computer. It'll reboot it. And over here, you can shut down your machine.
Once you shut it down, all of the CPU and RAM will be freed up again for the host machine.
Back over on the View menu, here you could adjust the resolution. You could also adjust the scaling.
Right now, this screen is scaled pretty small, so I'd probably want to increase that to make it a
little bit easier to see. You can also configure your various input devices. And here we have
devices. One of the interesting ones is under USB. You can use any of the USB devices connected to
your host machine on your guest machine. You also have access to something called shared folders,
shared clipboard, and drag and drop. This allows you to move files back and forth between your host
machine and the guest machine. You could also share a clipboard, and you could also drag and
drop files between the two. You can enable those using these different options. Lastly,
we also have the Help menu, which gives you help information about using VirtualBox.
Let's now shut down this virtual machine. In the top left-hand corner, let's go to the Machine
menu, and down at the very bottom, let's select Shut Down. This drops me back into the VirtualBox
Manager, and here we see the virtual machine that we created and also logged in to. You can add any
number of virtual machines here. Simply click up on Tools, and over here, there's the option
to add yet another virtual machine. You can have multiple virtual machines show up here. The one
thing that you have to be aware of, though, is if you're running multiple virtual machines at
the same time, they will all consume some of the CPU, some of the RAM, and some of the disk space
of the host machine, so you just have to make sure they don't overwhelm the host machine.
To start up this virtual machine again, here I’ll select it, and I can simply double-click on it,
and that'll start it up again, or I could go over to this icon and click on Start, or we could also
right-click on this option. Here too, there's the option to start the virtual machine. Let's
go up to the top of this menu, and let's click into Settings to see what we can do there. This
opens up Settings, and we can modify all of these different options related to our virtual machine.
For example, I’ll click into System, and let's say that I actually want to allocate more memory to
this virtual machine. Here, I can modify those values. I could do the same for the processor.
Maybe I want to allocate more of these cores. I could do that. I could also click into Display. We
can modify these values, and you can go through and modify all of these different settings.
For now, I’ll cancel out of this. To remove a virtual machine, go up to the virtual machine, and
you can right-click on it, and here's the option to remove it. That'll delete not only the virtual
machine, but also all files associated with that virtual machine. VirtualBox is incredibly rich
software, and you have so many different controls and capabilities that you could take advantage of.
Hopefully, this now gives you enough to get started and get your virtual machine running.
All right, well, hopefully you were able to get your virtual machine up and running. To
watch more videos like this one, please consider subscribing, and I'll see you in the next video.