Go
to https://www.osboxes.org/ubuntu/
and download the appropriate VM (such as Ubuntu 20.04 Hirsute
Hippo). Then visit the guide
for detailed steps for setting it up. Some notes:
- You may need to unpack a 7z file. School laptops will open the file
directly, but others may need additional software. This will create
a
.vdi file.
- School VMs can typically run with 1000K of RAM unless you are
directed otherwise.
- Macs require VirtualBox to have access to disk files before loading
images; it makes sense to move the
.vdi file to a folder it
can access.
- It's likely you will not need to change any video memory
settings. The suggestions on this page relate just to software with
significant graphics processing.
- I leave the Network adapter as NAT. This seems to work for
most cases at MSOE.
Dealing with Black Screen in Ubuntu
It seems that Ubuntu images sometimes boot into a black screen. Sometimes
waiting clears the issue, but sometimes it does not. Here are links and
things to try.
- Shut down the VM and open its settings. On the Display tab, try
setting the display memory to 32 MB. This sometimes does the trick.
- Black
screen on Ubuntu 18.04: Notes on changing video settings to fix the
issue. I believe these settings would apply to other versions as well.
- Black
screen on Ubuntu 20.04: a description of booting into recovery mode
and doing updates (that would work with many versions of Ubuntu). This
message also has a detailed discussion of disabling 3d acceleration.
Other Notes