Linux Virtual Machine

Sometimes, it's easier to get something done in Linux, compared to Windows. Yet, it might be a one-time job that doesn't warrant a special partition on the hard disk, or even a live CD-ROM or USB stick. For those time, you just want to run Linux on a virtual machine. You can delete the VM once you're done, or just keep VM file the run it again the next time you need it.

For desktop virtualization, it's a tossup between VMWare and Oracle's VirtualBox. Decided to go with the latter, since it's open-source and I feel easier to install and configure. Lots of pre-built images to choose from, but I decided to build the VM from scratch. It's just a matter of creating the VM and specifying the memory and hard disk space. On first boot, specify which Linux ISO to boot from and do a clean install.

Started off with Ubuntu Server, since I have no need for a GUI. For some reason, I was not able to install the VirtualBox guest additions. Tried:

sudo mkdir --p /media/cdrom
sudo mount -t auto /dev/cdrom /media/cdrom/
cd /media/cdrom/
sudo sh VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

and:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-guest-utils

Seemed to do something, yet not able to get full-screen window and cut-and-paste between host and guest, so I guess it didn't work.

Moved on to Lubuntu. Window resolution was so low that the installation screens are cropped out. Managed to get the OS installation going. Again, had a hard time getting the guest additions working, even though I got the Guest Additions CD image mounted.

Lastly, I tried Linux Mint 18. With this, everything just worked. No cropped installation screens. Full-screen window *before* I installed guest additions. And now I can open multiple terminals, do cut-and-paste between host and guest, and shared folders. Bonus points - python comes pre-installed (but not pip).