Linux as a virtual machine on Windows

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sun, 2008-11-09 at 11:46 -0500, Bruce Corbin wrote:
 Any links to 
> good tutorials would be appreciated since I haven't done it in over a 
> year,

The Ubuntu guides would be a good start:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation (the official guide is
linked from there)

The material is licensed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/License

> I have never attempted to use or install Wine.  I can Google it and 
> probably muddle through it.  Any suggestions, links, tales of problems, 
> etc would be appreciated.  

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine

> Is Wine my only choice?  Is it the best choice?

For what?

> The last item is where I am really hoping for some help.  Over the years 
> I have heard "virtual machine" so many  times that I have no doubt that 
> I can Google up a year or two of reading.  I don't have a year or two to 
> devote to it.  Any suggestions on packages to use to run Linux as a 
> virtual machine on Windows XP? 

You can use Virtualbox, some of whose editions are free. I would guess
that the official user manuals are a good place to look:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

You can also use vmware. They even have virtual appliances on their
website that have Ubuntu preinstalled. That is, you can download a
virtuam machine that already has Ubuntu installed and run it straight
away in vmware: http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/1224