Installing Ubuntu on vmware under windows 7

Ever wanted to run a linux distro without live cd or dual boot?

Sometimes its good to "simulate" operating systems, or just use them in a seperate cocoon, just to see how they work, or how they respond during some experiments, without doing any harm to existing systems like using dual boot and messing it all up.

Today there is a lot of software, that allows you to run an OS inside another OS without problems. One of them is Vmware. There are several brands in the vmware software, but the vmware player is the free one and allows you to do what we need to do. So, we will need vmware player, and you can download it here for free. The installation is easy, and after a few clicks its up and running.

Now, what we want to do, is installing and running a linux distro under vmware player.
First of all, after installing vmware, you need to download the ubuntu distro. download it here.
Look for what you choose, because there is a 32 and 64 bit version. The version i downloaded last was 10.10 64 bit. You will get an *.iso file, and store is somewhere on your hard drive. Later on, i will explain how you can run Android 2.3 and 3.0 through vmware on your pc!


Lets get started!

Now that you have installed vmware player, you can start it up. The screen looks like this:

You can see that there is a button to create a new virtual machine. We will do so, because thats what we want to to, running a virtual machine inside windows, that contains a full working ubuntu verion. After this, the next that you wil see is :

Here you have to choose where the installation package is, the image, the "disk"... Since we have no disc, but a downloaded iso file. So we choose "installer disc image (iso)", and we enter the full path of the downloaded ubuntu iso file. Then we click NEXT.

 Here we can give a name to our installation. The name does not realy matter, its just to recognize it later. What DOES matter, is the username and password that you have to enter. At this point, vmware found out that you want to install a linux distro, and as all linux distros do, it needs a userid and password. You can give it here, so you don't have to give later on in the installation, what would be the fact through boot installation. Choose wisely and click next.

Vmware asks you a name for the virtual machine. Use something easy and unique. The asked location is the location where vmware will install the image file of the OS that it will install. You can leave its defaults or just change it...click next...

Vmware asks you how much disk space your virtual linux machine needs. Default is 20 or 40 gb. If you install  ubuntu for test purposes, 20 to 40 gb will do more than enough. If you plan to use ubuntu for work, or server, or just "not for testing", think about the size it wil need.
Further on, vmware asks how it must store the installation. In one big file, or in multiple files. The difference between them is explained on the screen. Click next.

From now on, the installation of ubuntu will start up. Time to take a cup of coffee! (the next screens are the installation)

After the installation is complete, you can start up ubuntu through vmware. You can put it fullscreen, as if you pc runs on ubuntu. There we are!