Installing VirtualBox
VirtualBox is a pretty standard installation.
After you choose the host operating system
(the operating system of the computer where
you are installing VirtualBox), you can click
on the Run button to begin or Save the .exe file to your desktop and launch it from there.
Once you launch the Setup Wizard, you are
presented with a welcome screen. Click Next
to advance. The next screen is the License
Agreement. Read over this and if acceptable,
select “I accept” and click on Next.
The next screen you are presented with is the
Custom Setup screen pictured below. This
allows you to choose the different options for
installing VirtualBox. We are going to keep the
defaults and press Next, but you are
encouraged to explore the options when you
are more comfortable with what the software
can do.
On the next screen, choose where you would
like a shortcut to be created and click the Next
button.
Once you have chosen the location of the
shortcuts, you will be warned that continuing
with the installation will temporarily
disconnect you from your network while the
connections are reset. This is perfectly fine so
click Yes to continue.
At the next screen, click Install to begin. This
will take a few minutes to run depending on
your computer.
If you are alerted to compatibility issues, you
can click “Continue Anyway” each time it
appears. As the installation process continues,
you will be reconnected to your network
before you are informed that the installation is
complete.
Click Finish and you are done. Now,
VirtualBox will open for you as seen in the
following screen shot (Click to enlarge):
Installing Chrome
The first part of installing Chrome OS is
complete. We now have a working copy of a
virtualization software application to install to.
Before we can proceed, we need to get a copy
of Chrome OS. There are plenty of torrent sites
that have copies available but we are doing to
use one that can be downloaded directly from
a recommended web site because we know it
has been tested on VirtualBox. Browse to this
download site and create an account. Once
you have downloaded Chrome, extract it to a
location where you can easily find it.
Going back to VirtualBox, click on the New
button in the upper left hand corner. This will
start the wizard to create your Chrome OS
virtual machine. At the welcome screen, click
Next and you will be taken to the “VM Name
and OS Type screen”. Name your machine and
under “OS Type”, select Linux for the
Operating System and leave the Version set
to Ubuntu and click on the Next button.
The next screen allows you to set the memory
that will be allocated to your virtual machine.
The default will provide enough for you to test
out your machine, but this can be adjusted if
you choose. When you have this set, click on
Next to continue.
The next screen asks you to select the hard
disk image that will be used to boot Chrome
OS. Since we downloaded a pre-built machine,
we will select Use existing hard disk. If we had
installed Chrome OS already, we would be
able to select it from the list. Since this is the
first installation, we will need to browse to the
virtual machine we extracted earlier by
clicking on the browse icon which is the little
folder.
The browse icon opens the Virtual Media
Manager where we can select the hard disk we
wish to use. Since Chrome is not yet listed,
click on Add and then navigate to the
extracted Chrome OS file, chrome-
os-0.4.22.8-gdgt.vmdk. Select this file and
click Open. Now that Chrome has been added
to the Media Manager, highlight it and click
on Select. You will be brought back to the
Virtual Hard Disk screen. Here, click Next.
At the Summary screen, look over all of the
parameters. If everything checks out, click on
Finish.
Running Chrome OS
Now that everything has been installed, it’s
time to take Chrome for a test drive. Chrome
OS should now be listed as an option. To boot
it up, highlight it in the list (it may be the only
one) and click Start.
Once the boot process starts up, you will be
alerted that the Virtual Machine will
auto-capture your keyboard. This screen also
gives you directions how to uncapture the
keyboard so you can work on your host
machine as well. After reading these
instructions, click OK to proceed. When
Chrome OS boots up you will be asked to
login. Use your Google account credentials
and start playing around in your new
operating system!
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