What is a Virtual Machine (VM)?

A virtual machine is basically a computer that runs inside of your computer. For example, if I currently have Windows 7 installed, I can download a virtualizer program and run Ubuntu inside of it. This can be extremely useful when running beta software, or if you do not know how to dual-boot. Most of these programs that allow virtual machines are very easy to use. An important point is that you must make sure that your computer supports Virtualization. Both Intel and AMD chips support this so do not worry about that. If virtualization is currently disabled, you can head over to your BIOS to enable it. 2 very important words with virtual machines are host and guest. The host is the operating system (i.e. Windows 7, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, etc.) that the virtual machine software is installed on (in the example above it would be Windows 7). The guest is the operating system that you are running virtually (in the example it would be Ubuntu). There is quite a few virtual machine software available however our favourites are:

• VirtualBox (ITS FREE!!!)
• VMWare
• Parallels