HowTo: Virtual PCLinux 2007 via VirtualBox over Fedora 8

Five Easy Steps of Virtual PCLinux 2007 OS inside Fedora 8 via VirtualBox.

I was trying to get myself a less more busy with linux UML kernel compilation a couple of hours ago and, all of a sudden as an eye refresher, I simply went back into creating a simple blog entry on creating a virtual PCLinux 2007 machine inside my Fedora 8 using VirtualBox linux software. This got my linux interests of taking a peep of how PCLinux 2007 OS works a bit.

For those who wish to evaluate more of PC Linux OS without rebooting our own Linux box, read more.

Goal and Objectives
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1. Install PC Linux 2007 using PCLinuxOS Live ISO image via VirtualBox software. This would be done inside Fedora 8.

2. Install PCLinux 2007 OS to my virtual machine.

3. Evaluate a PCLinux OS virtually without affecting your current desktop

I would try to go brief with this one.

Here are the simple steps.

Basic Requirements
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1. Basically, the first requirement is to have the PCLinux 2007 ISO image. This can be downloaded from here PCLinux 2007 ISO image can be downloaded from here.
This ISO image allows you to run PCLinux 2007 live from CD or from the image itself.

Secondly, make sure you have VirtualBox software installed already.VirtualBox can be downloaded from here. You can follow my steps on installing VirtualBox on Fedora boxes here.

There is no need to burn these installer and ISO images into blank CDs as we can proceed with these steps without burning them to CD disk.

The Virtual Process
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2. From VirtualBox menu, create a new virtual machine by clicking New. You can name it to something nearest to PCLinux 2007 OS. Just make sure you have selected kernel 2.6.x as its base kernel. Proceed with the normal settings on virtual memory allocation and hard drive virtual capacity.


3. Still from VirtualBox, select the recently created virtual machine and click on Settings to modify a few default values. Select CD/DVD-ROM from the leftmost pane of the window box. Make sure the Mount CD/DVD drive and ISO image file are selected and ticked. There is also a need to click on the yellow folder icon to specify the location of PC Linux 2007 ISO image file. As shown from the image below


If you need to activate and plug other devices like floppy, sound devices, and USB ports, you can do so from the above window box.

4. Now, start your virtual machine by pressing Start. This would boot your selected ISO image. As a default, select Live CD to boot from and wait for PCLInux 2007 machine to successfully boot. You can choose to activate your virtual network card during the boot up process .




5. And Lastly, simply click Install PCLinux OS icon from the desktop. The process of installing PC Linux 2007 is very simple. All you need to do is to follow those easy to understand simple instructions that are being presented during the installation, usually answerable by Next button.

There is no need to worry from the virtual installation as the installation is limited and occurring inside the virtual machine itself.



Without the download time, the process and steps above should eat up about 20 minutes of your time.

I consider PCLinux OS as an alternative desktop linux OS with well polished desktop simplicity and friendliness. Enjoy then.