I wish to work on Linux, but the only machine l have at my disposal is my brother’s windows laptop when it’s free. Can I create a virtual Linux system using QEMU ?
You can, but I’d suggest instead, at least at first, VirtualBox. Tinkering with QEMU can be a steep learning curve, so VirtualBox being more UI-oriented could make things simpler.
Thank you for your candid reply. But I would love to tinker with QEMU even before l download Linux.
Is there any tutorial ?
I usually use QEMU for Android, so I don’t have any tutorials I could recommend, at most having their docs at hand.
Also no Android tutorial either as I go by muscle memory on Android due setup changing between Android distros, their versions, and versions of QEMU, and me using Android offline so always the same installer.
But as apparently QEMU is one of the better VM tools around, there should be plenty of tutorials too. If you go for major distros, with their hardware compatibility being more or less the same afaik, QEMU setup tutorials should be overarching too.
And if the tutorials you find don’t fully or properly cover your chosen distro, since you seem to be willing to tinker, you could do like I did with Android and pick some random tutorial as a start point and figure out what changes from there.
What GNU/Linux applications do you want to use? If you want desktop free software such as Firefox, LibreOffice, LMMS, Inkscape or Kdenlive, you can install many of them directly on Windows, it will run faster than a virtual machine. If you want to learn the command line, such as bash, curl, vim, imagemagick and ffmpeg, or program in C or C++ using the GNU toolchain, try WSL, from which you can access your Windows files under /mnt/c, /mnt/d etc. A standalone virtual machine makes sense when you want to play with a desktop environment such as KDE or GNOME, or a tiny compositor such as Sway, or a rare desktop app that isn’t cross-platform. But it’s more pleasant to run them on hardware directly, having installed Debian or Fedora on a USB SSD.
Terminals and command lines like fish and zsh run well on windows ? Vim and ffmpeg ? They work fine on windows ?
WSL is the name of the tool, it installs an Ubuntu virtual machine that integrates with Windows in a way that you don’t have to care about disk sizes, shared folders or remote access. It gives you an Ubuntu bash window after a few minutes of automatic downloading. Under WSL, I do run both vim and ffmpeg OK. You can install most packages you want like on a full Ubuntu installation.
Thanks for sharing. The only difference is that instead of Ubuntu, l’d love to go for MX Linux, as I want to get a hang of it.
While I don’t know whether MX Linux supports WSL (just a few distributions do), I know that MX is based on Debian, and you can install Debian under WSL with
wsl --install -d Debian. Their console experience is very similar.
So you work on Ubuntu ? I’m getting stuck in this bash window itself…
You can install a terminal multiplexer:
sudo apt-get install byobu- and launch it:byobu, then follow the instructions on how to use multiple CLI apps at the same time. For example, install zsh, vim, ffmpeg and other console programs you wanted, and launch them in multiple byobu tabs. If you want to install a desktop application, you can do that with apt-get as well, and WSL will create a shortcut in your Windows start menu. Basically, you work on your Windows desktop and use GNU/Linux apps at the same time.Learnt a lot today. Exploring gradually what linux is.
Windows 10/11 Pro has Microsoft Hyper-V built-in for virtualization, that would be the most straightforward to use on Windows. It can run Linux guest OSes.
So how do I use this feature ?
You typically need to enable the Windows Feature called “Hyper-V” if it isn’t enabled already. There’s a bunch of documentation online if you search around, offhand these two should get you going
https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/how-to/virtualisation/ubuntu-on-hyper-v/
https://www.thewindowsclub.com/how-to-install-linux-ubuntu-on-hyper-v-in-windows
https://github.com/RidwanurRahim/Hyper-V-Ubuntu-Server (way more advanced than you need but steps 1-5 could be useful if want more how-tos)
Hints:
- You don’t have to use Ubuntu if you don’t want to, just do a VM install with any .iso image file (though I’d say Ubuntu is fine if you just want to tinker and get to learn basics, and Ubuntu itself is well documented)
- For the networking you typically don’t need to do anything too advanced, a standard default switch to create a virtual NAT is fine for the most part. You only need to tinker with bridged networking if you intend to run a VM that pulls down its own IP address and has its own incoming internet traffic separate from your host Windows system.
It absolutely can, but I don’t know if it’s the easiest way to try it out.
You might find creating a playable Linux USB and booting from that helpful, as you can try out Linux without the overhead of a VM.
Two reasons : firstly, a pendrive is an expensive item for me.
Secondly, l need to learn to create sandboxes and virtual machines whenever l need to !!
Then qemu sounds like a good tool to play with
