Linux on a VirtualBox virtual machine

We will work with a VirtualBox image. Note that for this option, you need to have at least 50 GiB (ideally 200-500 GiB) free space available on your laptop, and for good performance, it should be an SSD drive.

The first step is to download and install VirtualBox on your computer. Note that you need to make sure that your computer has virtualisation technology (VT-d and VT-x) support enabled in its firmware. Unfortunately, the instructions for doing do depend on the model of your laptop, so you need to find out how to do that on your own. If you don’t manage, you can go to the Servicepoint IT (see under the heading “Who can help me if I have issues with my laptop?”) and ask the staff there to help you set up VirtualBox on your computer.

Once you have VirtualBox installed and virtualisation enabled, you can import the image that we have prepared for you. First, download the Geoscripting image by following this link. Next, click File → Import Appliance…, and select the file you just downloaded. Click Next and in Machine Base Folder field, select the directory in which you want the image to be placed (this should be on a drive that has at least 50 GiB space). Next, click Finish and wait for the import to finish. If you get an error E_INVALIDARG, most likely you did not set the machine base folder to a place that has sufficient space. Other reasons could include a corrupted download, in which case, you need to download the image file again.

Once it is finished, you will see a new virtual machine called Geoscripting in the main window of VirtualBox. Click Machine → Settings… and make sure there are no errors or warnings that are pointed out at the bottom of the window. Next, go to the System tab and set the number of cores and the amount of memory you want to give to the virtual machine. The number of cores should stay low, one or two is enough for getting started. The memory should be as much as possible, while leaving enough for your host OS to run. The green line is a good indicator, you can set the slider to the maximum that is still within the green line. Do the same in the Display tab for the video memory. In the Shared Folders tab, you can add a folder on your computer that will become available as a directory in the Linux image, so that you can copy files from/to your host OS.

Lastly, click OK to dismiss the configuration window, and click the big green Start arrow. If all went well, after some time you will see a login screen. The password is the same as the displayed username, that is, osboxes.org. This is also the administrator password. (Note: the actual username is just osboxes, as usernames in Linux cannot contain special characters.)

If you got this far, good job, you are now running Linux! We will use this environment throughout the course, so explore it and get familiar with it. You can press the Ubuntu logo (circle with three dots) at the bottom left to see all the software isntalled on the image.

When it comes time to shut down your environment, click the power button at top right, then again click the power button, and click power off, don’t use the X button.

Configuration and VirtualBox Guest Additions

Depending on your hardware and software, you might need to tweak your VirtualBox setup a little. Firstly, check if your keyboard input and screen settings are working properly.

If you have a non-US/UK keyboard, you will need to change your keyboard settings so that you can type comfortably. To do that, click on the “Show Apps” button on the lower left and type “Settings”. In the Settings app, find the keyboard tab on the left, click on “Add Input Source…”, click on the three dots, then click on “More” and search for your keyboard language. Once you add it, you can drag and drop languages to reorder them (the top one will be the default when the virtual machine starts).

Next, check if the VirtualBox window resizes properly when you change its size. It should fill the entire area of the window, without adding an empty border or scrollbars. In most cases, it should work automatically. But sometimes, the VirtualBox version that you have on your host machine is different from the VirtualBox Guest Additions installed on the VirtualBox image. Then you need to install the correct version to get the right drivers for resizing the screen.

To install VirtualBox Guest Additions, while you are running the virtual machine, click on the “Devices” menu at the very top, then select “Insert Guest Additions CD Image…”. This option will ask whether you want to download the VirtualBox Guest Additions ISO file. Agree and wait for it to finish, afterwards the image should get inserted and you should see a CD icon on the left side of the screen. Clicking on it, you should see the file manager with a message “Contains software to run”. Click on the “Run Software” button to start the setup.

Most of the times the setup will not be successful because of the old version of VirtualBox Guest Additions already installed on the VirtualBox image. To remove it, go to “Show apps” at the lower left corner, and run the “Terminal” app. Next, run the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt remove --purge virtualbox-guest-utils virtualbox-guest-x11

It will ask for your user’s password, which is osboxes.org. You will not see the password when you type it (it’s a security feature, but it remembers what you typed). After that, type Y to confirm removal of the old Guest Additions. Now that it’s finished, you can go back to the CD image directory and again click on “Run Software”. This time, it should install successfully. After that, restart the Virtual Machine, and your screen should resize successfully!

You can now go back to the tutorial you were reading, you are finished with your system setup. Below are some suggestions in case you can’t run VirtualBox successfully or if you are an advanced (power) user.

Linux on a USB drive

Download the ISO image of Ubuntu 24.04, and write it onto a USB stick. There are several programs to do so depending on your operating system, e.g. Rufus on Windows.

This will create a non-persistent Live USB. That means that any changes you do will be lost on reboot. If you want to keep your changes, you have two options: 1) Write a persistent Live USB from within Linux, or 2) install Linux on external/internal hard drive.

sudo add-apt-repository universe
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mkusb usb-pack-efi
sudo -H mkusb /path/to/iso/filename.iso

Linux on a hard drive

The methods described above make a Live system, that is, the contents of the USB drive are mostly stored in memory, which is fast but limits the amount of memory you can use for data processing. Its speed is also limited by the speed of the USB drive. You can also install Linux, to make it a regular operating system. It can be installed on an internal hard drive, or even an external hard drive or a large, fast USB stick. In case of an external drive, you get a portable system that you can boot from any PC, but it may be slower than when using a persistent Live USB, as its contents will not be loaded into memory. If installed on an internal hard drive, it can live alongside another OS like Windows in a dual boot setup.

To install Linux onto a hard drive, boot from a Live USB (as detailed above) and double-click on the “Install” icon on the desktop, and follow the setup wizard.

Installing necessary software

If you have installed Ubuntu on your disk or a live USB, you won’t yet have all hte software that is otherwise preloaded on the VirtualBox image above. To obtain it, you should run the install script that fetches all the needed Geoscripting software for you. For that, open the terminal and run the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git
git clone https://github.com/GeoScripting-WUR/InstallLinuxScript.git
cd InstallLinuxScript
cd noble # For Ubuntu 24.04
bash install.sh

This is not needed if you use the VirtualBox image above, as this step has already been done for you.