best free virtual machine for running linux on windows

Well, this whole procedure is not only time-consuming and error-prone, moreover, if you don’t know how to do it properly it can even cause a breakdown of the system’s current OS. For example, we have Windows 10 PC and want to try Ubuntu Linux, in such a scenario either you can set a boot manager that offers a selection of which operating system should be started when the system is booted. Generally, on our PC or Laptop, we have only one operating system either Windows or Linux, however, what happens if we want to try out some other OS.

Not as convenient as the above, since you can't run both OS's at once.Which Virtual Machine should you use on Windows 10? What is a virtual machine? wubi allows you to install Ubuntu right from Windows, then dual-boot.

It's nice to be able to experiment with a virtual PC, add a few packages, then revert to a previous snapshot and 'start clean'. There are nice options here for taking snapshots of your Virtual PC in a particular state, suspend/resume a virtual PC, etc. Virtualization software lets you boot up another OS in a virtual PC, one that shares hardware with the host OS. This is a little more on the experimental side and may not be as stable as some of the virtualization options. These don't have the overhead of virtualizing, and they start up faster since you're not booting a virtual PC. coLinux, which is limited to 32-bit systems. There are several packages that will run Linux as a Windows process, without simulating an entire PC as virtualization does.

SUA is Microsoft's Subsystem for UNIX-based Applications, offering a tools and an environment for building/running Unix programs under Windows.

UWIN is a set of Unix tools/libraries from ATT Research that run on Windows.

These are native versions of the tools, as opposed to cygwin which requires a cygwin DLL to fake out its tools into thinking they are running on Linux.

GNU utilities for Win32 is another lightweight alternative.

msys is a smaller, lightweight alternative to cygwin.

This has been around awhile and is mature.

cygwin gives you a bash shell with lots of tools, including an X11 server.

If you just want the GNU/Linux tools, there are a few choices.

Best free virtual machine for running linux on windows