What is a Virtual Machine?

If you are using an Operating System that makes things a bit uncomfortable or if you just want to use a "sandbox" environment where you can do all sorts of tests without the fear that you will break something on your computer then you can find a Virtual Machine to be extremely useful.

Virtual machines (VMs) allow you to run other operating systems within your current OS. The virtual OS will run as if it’s just another program on your computer. This is ideal for a number of reasons:

• Test new versions of operating systems.
• Experiment with other operating systems.
• Use software requiring an outdated operating system.
• Run software designed for another operating system.

Virtualbox

VirtualBox is a great, open-source application that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux. VirtualBox is free, including advanced features like snapshots. This allows you to save a virtual machine’s state and revert to that state in the future, which is great for testing.

How to download, install, and configure VirtualBox

To download VirtualBox, simply head over to their website and click on the appropriate download (meaning what Operating System you have, which is the host) under VirtualBox 5.2.20 platform packages. You can find really detailed guides on the Internet depending on what your host OS is and what guest OS you want to run. For example, if you want to install Linux on a Windows host machine you can read this and this guide.

Important: This is not necessary to do. It is just a suggestion so that you can experiment with different technologies without worrying that you can break something on your computer.