I’ve played around with Linux a little on other’s machines, but I’ve never installed it myself or really tried to use it on a day-to-day basis. So, ready to take the plunge, I decided to install it in a virtual environment so that I could easily switch between it and all of my Windows-based tools and applications that I use for my editing duties. Keep in mind that I’m an editor (translation: English major), not a tech person, and will claim only a reasonable amount of tech savviness as a user.

So the first thing I should have done, apparently, was use VirtualBox or VMware, but no, I chose to install it on Virtual PC, and I’m rather stubborn, which made everything that much more interesting. Since I had to google for workarounds and bug fixes, visit Ubuntu forums, and ask — at different times — advice from a number of kind people to get this up and running (hence, the village), I thought I would compile it all together in one place, if you are so foolish as to want to do this at home.

Creating the virtual machine on Virtual PC

After installing Virtual PC (easy), I downloaded the ISO image of Ubuntu 8.04. Clicking New on the VPC console, I used the wizard to Create A Virtual Machine, give the .vmc file a name and location, select Other from the drop-down menu of OSs to emulate, and then to make a choice on the screen for Memory.

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