Creating a New Virtual Machine

To create Ubuntu virtual machines, you’ll need two pieces of software. First, you’ll need the Ubuntu operating system itself. Visit Ubuntu’s downloads page^[8] and select the Desktop version of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The file is quite large and may take a while to download. Save this file to your Downloads folder.

Next, you’ll need VirtualBox, the software you’ll use to create and manage our virtual machine. Visit VirtualBox’s download page^[9] and download the version for your operating system. Once the software downloads, run the installer and accept all of the default options. The installer may ask for permission to install additional drivers or components, which you should allow.

Once the installation completes, run VirtualBox. You’ll see a menu across the top of the screen that looks like this:

Select the New button to create your machine. VirtualBox displays a wizard that walks you through creating your machine.

The first screen asks for a name for your machine and the operating system you plan to install.

Enter the following into the form:

• For the Name, enter “Ubuntu1804” or something more descriptive.
• For Type, choose Linux.
• For Version, choose Ubuntu (64-bit).

When you’re ready, click Continue.

The next screen asks you to choose the amount of memory you want to allocate to the virtual machine. For a smooth experience, choose at least 1024 MB of RAM. If you have 8 GB of RAM on your machine, consider choosing 2048 MB of RAM instead. Once you’ve set the RAM, click Continue.

Next, you’ll create a hard disk for your virtual machine. This hard disk is nothing more than a big data file on your computer’s hard drive, but the operating system you install in VirtualBox will think it’s a real physical hard drive. It’ll see this hard drive instead of the real one on your computer. Select the default setting of “Create a virtual hard disk now” and click Create.

The wizard then asks you for the hard disk file type. Choose the default of VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image), and press Continue.

The next screen asks you how VirtualBox should create the disk. VirtualBox can create a “fixed” disk, which allocates all of the space right away, or it can dynamically allocate space as needed. A fixed disk results in slightly better performance when your machine is running because it doesn’t have to do any calculations to expand the size of the disk. A dynamic disk saves disk space. Performance isn’t a concern here, so you can save disk space and let VirtualBox dynamically allocate space as needed. Select the option and click Continue.

Next, VirtualBox asks you for the filename and location of the disk and how big you want the disk to be, as shown in the first figure.

VirtualBox automatically uses the name of your virtual machine as the name of the disk, and it places the disk’s file in the default folder that VirtualBox uses for virtual machines. While you can change this, it’s best to leave it alone.

Set the size of the disk to 32 GB or more. The default 8 GB of space isn’t enough since you’ll install some additional programs. Then, click Create.

VirtualBox creates the new machine, which appears in the list of machines in VirtualBox’s interface. When you select the machine, you’ll see a summary of the machine’s attributes as shown in the second figure.

Let’s set up the network interfaces next.