What's a good way to run a virtual copy of Ubuntu on Windows 7?

Question

I have a mathematical program that runs on 64 bit Ubuntu. I need to run it on my Windows 7 workstation, preferably without having to install Ubuntu instead of Windows, because this is a short term need. Is there a way I could run 64-bit Ubuntu as a virtual machine on my Windows 7 box?

Answer 1

You can download VirtualBox to run a virtual copy of Ubuntu.

Download a disk image of the Ubuntu 64-bit install CD here. Then open VirtualBox and create a new machine with the disk image as the start up disk.

I use this to run Ubuntu on Windows 7 every day and it works very well.

Answer 2

You can use VirtualBox and if you really just want Ubuntu for the software i.e. rather than for the whole Unity interface based experience, you might consider Lubuntu instead.

http://lubuntu.net/

Lubuntu is simply the official LXDE version of Ubuntu and while its spartan blue/grey looks may not win any beauty contests, it does work a lot better than other forms of Ubuntu in VirtualBox.

LXDE is a desktop environment designed for less capable hardware and therefore it is quite suited to virtualisation software, which typically isn't able to use your hardware as efficiently as a bare metal installation.

Answer 3

This really isn't an Ubuntu specific question, but you need to install Cygwin inside your Windows 7 session. Cygwin is a Linux emulator. You can then run your Linux executable from within your Cygwin session.

http://www.cygwin.com/install.html