20. We will now install the VirtualBox Guest Additions on Kubuntu. First, we will need to mount the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD image to the virtual machine. Click on your virtual machine name (33) and click 'Settings' (34).

21. Click on 'CD/DVD-ROM' (35) and click browse (36). Click 'Add' (37) to select the VirtualBox Guest Additions CD image. The VirtualBox Guest Additions CD image is in the folder where you have installed VirtualBox (usually in C:\Program Files\Sun\xVM VirtualBox). The VirtualBox Guest Additions CD image file name is VBoxGuestAdditions.iso.

11. Press 'Start' (20) to start the virtual machine. Your virtual machine will be started.

12. Next, choose the language and press Enter. Please take note that when you click inside the virtual machine, the virtual machine will capture your mouse and keyboard input. To release mouse and keyboard from virtual machine, you can press the host key, which is the right CTRL key on your keyboard.

8. Next step, we will mount the Kubuntu CD image to the virtual machine. You can download the Kubuntu image from Kubuntu website (or any other Linux distribution). Click on your virtual machine name (9) and press 'Setting' (10).

9. Navigates to 'CD/DVD-ROM' (11). Select 'Mount CD/DVD Drive' (12). If you are using a real Kubuntu CD, you can choose 'Host CD/DVD Drive' (13) and select the CD/DVD drive latter that contains the Linux CD/DVD. If you are using a Kubuntu CD image, select 'ISO Image File' (14) and click browse (15).

10. Click 'Add' (16) to add the Kubuntu CD image. Select the Kubuntu CD image (17) and press 'Select' (18) to mount it to the virtual machine. Press 'OK' (19) to save the virtual machine setting.

If you are planning to use and test Linux operating system, but you don't like to dual boot, you can actually test and 'run' Linux on top of your Windows operating system using virtual machines software. A virtual machine software will simply allows you to run a guest operating system in a virtual environment (in this case, Linux) on top of host operating system (Windows). In this post, I will show you how to install and configure Kubuntu in VirtualBox and how to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. VirtualBox is a virtualization software and VirtualBox Guest Additions consist of device drivers and system applications for the guest operating system that optimize the guest for better performance and usability. I choose VirtualBox because it is fast, easy to use, freeware and small (installer only around 65MB).

1. Download and install VirtualBox. VirtualBox installer will install a few virtual hardware drivers, so make sure you allow Windows to install these drivers.

2. Run VirtualBox. Click 'New' (1) to create a new virtual machine in VirtualBox.