Have you ever wondered how easily I’m able to install so many different operating systems like Windows XP, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva and write a tutorial on them that fast? If you thought I used one computer for each operating system or used a single PC to install an operating system (OS) then delete it to install another, then you haven’t used Virtual Box or other Virtualization products.

With the help of Virtual Box, a free x86/x64 virtualization product, and a good PC, one can install as many operating systems on the same computer as needed as long as the PC can handle the load.

Virtual Box is a feature rich and a powerful virtualization solution. You can use it to install as many virtual machines or guest operating systems as possible. The only thing that will limit you is your PC. Using Virtual Box I was able to install Windows XP, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Mandriva, Fedora on the same machine while running all at the same time.

Currently, Virtual Box runs on Windows, Linux and Mac machines. Virtual Box allows you to install (Windows NT, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Linux, and many more) as guest operating systems.

It is a great way to test applications also. You might come across a program that only run on a certain OS. Using Virtual Box, you can install the required operating system and install your application to use as needed without buying a new computer just to run one application.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to install Virtual Box and configure it for your preferred guest OS. Later I will show you how to install a guest operating system of your choice.

To learn how to install Virtual Box, please follow my slides below.

1) Download a copy of Virtual Box from here and install.

2) Run the executable file to install Virtual Box.

3) Accept the License Agreement and continue with the installation.

4) Select the features to include in the program. Support for USB, Network Bridging and python can be determined here.

5) This warning is just to notify you that your networking feature will be reset temporarily while Virtual Box is being installed.

6) Ready to install. Click the Install button to begin the installation.

7)  This is the default interface of Virtual Box. I had two guest machines profiles on my system that’s why you see two host already created (ubuntu & Windows XP).

8) The is the general settings panel. Here, you can specify the disk and machine folders.

9) Networking setup panel. Here, you can add up to four networking interfaces for each machine. Great feature if you need to setup inter-networking connectivity.

There’s more but until then, I will leave you with this. My next post will be about installing guest operating system in Virtual Box. Stay tune for that.