Virtual machine is something like Sun's Virtualbox or VMWare. Virtualbox is, imho, better for running things like Linux.
Some screenshots here... http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Screenshots Let's say you install Virtualbox on a Vista machine. You then go into it and say "Create Virtual Machine", tell it how much memory to give it and how much disk space. It then effectively boots into a BIOS type screen and will say "no operating system installed", so you stick in a Ubuntu CD, try it again and it'll hopefully install the operating system. Once installed you open virtualbox, say "start virtual machine" and it starts in a window. You can use the right-ctrl key and F together to toggle between windowed and full screen. So if, for instance, you don't want to use Vista at all you just boot into it, start the virtual machine and then do right-ctrl-F and forget Vista is even there. But if you have a decent sized resolution better, maybe, to run the Linux in a window - you should be able to cut and paste between the two as well, I believe. Sean -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
