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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Can a Linux installation be run as a VM in Windows? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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This might sound daft, but something similar used to work with live discs.

I've got Windows 10 and Mint 21.1 dual booting on my computer at the moment. Every so often I'll realise that I've missed something from my Windows installation. If it's important, I then have to boot to Windows to get the information, or the settings etc.

Is there a way to virtualise my Mint installation so that I can run both the OSs at once to make sure that I've got everything?

VirtualBox had a tool to do this with a live USB, but that was back in the MBR days, so it probably won't work with modern hardware.

EDIT: Sorry, I should clarify, Mint and Windows are on the same physical disk, and the plan is to remove Windows once I'm done.

Update: I'm giving up. It looks like it is possible if you have separate disks with separate boot partitions, but getting it to work with a shared boot partition is harder work than I'm willing to do right now.

VMware Player can use a partition or disk, but might be in read only mode, I couldn't get far enough to check.

Thanks for all the replies :)

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[–] lemann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

AFAIK on Windows the physical disk containing the partition needs to be marked offline in Disk Management, and the disk or a partition given exclusively to VirtualBox running as administrator, otherwise access is limited to read-only

I would suggest checking some other sources as well, just in case this has changed over the years. If you do successfully pass the physical partition into VirtualBox read-write, you might need to set up a virtual disk with grub to boot into your physical Linux partition

[–] Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 months ago

Yeah, that's what another user found too. It doesn't look like VirtualBox can do it, but this thread suggests that VMWare might be able to. I'm just trying it now :)

https://superuser.com/questions/1309308/boot-physically-installed-linux-in-vmware-workstation-on-windows-10