OPS245 Prep

Virtualized Operating Systems

• how it works
• hardware requirements

Workstation Setup

We'll use Linux Mint as a workstation in this course. Download the latest cinnamon release from https://www.linuxmint.com/

Linux Mint has a pleasant and fast user interface, but I can't force you to install it on bare hardware on your laptop, so the instructions are built on the assumption that you're installing it as a VirtualBox VM.

• Start VirtualBox and click "New".
• Set workstation as the name.
• Choose a folder where you'll store the VM's virtual hard drive. If you're using your laptop: you can store it anywhere. If you're using a removable drive: store it in any folder you like on the removable drive.
• Pick Ubuntu (64 bit) as the Linux version. Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, so it's almost the same thing.
• Give it at least 4GB of memory, more if you can afford it. Up to 8GB will be worth it if you run Firefox in it with lots of tabs open. Keep in mind that in later labs you will have more VMs to run at the same time. The host and each VM need its own RAM allocated. The total is limited by the size of your physical memory.
• Create a virtual hard drive at least 30GB in size. The default VDI type is fine. A dynamically allocated disk is fantastic and I haven't found it to be any slower than a preallocated ('fixed size') virtual drive.
• You can pick the Linux Mint .iso file before you start the VM, or right after the first time you start it.