I love virtualization. It allows me to run another operating system on my Mac, allowing me to mess it up as many times as I want without worrying about harming my host OS. I use Parallels Desktop 4.0 to run Windows 7 RC alongside Mac OS X Leopard (soon to be Snow Leopard), but today I’ll show you how to get virtualization set up on any operating system for free.
An example of what you can do with virtualization. Here, I'm running iTunes, Microsoft Word 2007, and Google Chrome.
Creating and running a virtual machine requires 2 things: software to run and manage the virtual machine, and a copy of an operating system to run. Luckily, both are free. You’ll also need a relatively fast computer with lots of memory, hard disk space, etc. If you think your machine is up to the challenge, download the free, open-source desktop virtualization software called VirtualBox at virtualbox.org, and a copy of Windows 7 release candidate here. Keep in mind that Windows 7 RC will expire next year sometime during the summer, so you may want to download a distribution of Linux. I prefer Ubuntu. Once you have downloaded both, install VirtualBox and launch the application. You should see the operating system selection screen, which would be blank since you haven’t installed Windows 7 yet.
VirtualBox OS Selection Screen
Click the “New” button in the top left corner to start creating your Windows 7 virtual machine. Just follow the prompts.
Select Windows 7 or Windows 7 64-bit.
For OS type, select Windows 7 or Windows 7 64-bit depending on which version you downloaded from Microsoft.
Select the amount of memory Windows should use.
Next, select how much memory you want Windows 7 to use. Windows 7 needs at least 512 MB. The more memory you allocate to Windows 7, the less responsive your host OS is going to be. Don’t exceed the amount of physical memory on your computer, or your host OS will have to start memory swapping. Translation: you need a good computer to run both of your operating systems smoothly.
The next few screens will guide you through making a new virtual hard disk for Windows 7. Make sure you have enough hard disk space to support both operating systems. I’m not recommending any specific storage size. Just decide which OS you use more and go from there. I would recommend choosing “Dynamically Expanding Storage” for the Hard Disk Storage type. This way, if the guest OS does not use up all the hard disk space you allocated, it only takes up the amount of space it uses. This is not to be confused with Dynamically Scaling Storage, which would magically add gigabytes to your allocation as you run out. VirtualBox doesn’t do that. Once you finish the wizard, Windows 7 should show up in your operating system list. Click on Windows 7 and click “Start.” The First Run wizard will ask for the location of the Windows ISO file you downloaded from Microsoft. Navigate to that directory and select it.
The VirtualBox First Run wizard.
Once Windows boots, go through the installation process. It’s actually amazingly fast: about 20 minutes long.
Install Windows 7. You're almost done!
Once you finish installing Windows, you’re done! Enjoy the new Windows 7 features such as the new Taskbar, Start Menu, etc. Oh, wait. VirtualBox doesn’t support Aero. But that doesn’t really matter. You now have two operating systems running simultaneously on one machine, and you didn’t spend a dime!
