Anil Dash has described how to run Windows 7 on a Mac running OS 10.6 -- as a virtual machine -- for free (after you buy Windows 7, of course). It's not very tricky and, according to Anil, works well. Start by installing Windows 7 in Boot Camp and wait while it grabs the necessary drivers (the duration of this process will vary).

Next, eject the Boot Camp disk and enter a few simple Terminal commands. You'll also need VirtualBox, which is free and open source virtualization software. Once you're done in Terminal, launch VirtualBox and browse to the file you made with Terminal. Read Anil's article for the details.

As today is Windows 7 launch day, we're interested in hearing from anyone who has installed it on their Mac, either via Boot Camp or virtualization.

For more, read Christina's post on installing Windows 7 on a Mac (at Download Squad), or Steve's take here. You can get your absolute fill of Win7 coverage all day today at DLS.

I received a private tweet from a reader the other day, who asked a question about a previous post in which I had installed Windows 7 RC1 on a Mac using Sun's VirtualBox. The tweet asked, "You did a post about installing Win 7 on the Mac for free. How about Linux?," which set up a challenge. Not only can you install Linux distributions on a Mac using VirtualBox, but it's extremely easy to do.

Why would you want to run Linux on a Mac? There are probably a few good reasons -- learning about a different OS, using software that's not available on the Mac platform, or for a Linux class in school. While you can create a bootable partition on your Mac and boot Linux from it, I prefer to do things the lazy way. In this short how-to post, I'll demonstrate how I installed Ubuntu Linux 9.04, also known as "Jaunty Jackalope."

Sometimes you have to use Windows. Supporting clients in multiple-OS environments makes this a necessity for some Mac users, while others want to run applications that are available in Windows only. You can get a preview of the latest flavor of Windows, Windows 7, by running Release Candidate 1 of the new OS either in a virtual environment such as VMWare Fusion, Parallels, or VirtualBox, or in Apple's own Boot Camp. Christina did a thorough rundown of the options for running Win 7 on Mac back in January.

Of course, you may not own Fusion or Parallels, and perhaps you don't want to have to boot into Windows separately. In that case, you can download a copy of Sun's VirtualBox application (it's free) and then download a copy of Windows 7 RC1 from the Microsoft website (it's free, too!). Follow these detailed instructions or watch the video, and you'll have a free way to test Windows 7 until at least June 1, 2010. Windows 7 will shut down after every two hours of use after March 1, 2010, which is Microsoft's subtle way of telling you to buy the OS or update to a later build.

If you're a VMWare Fusion user, the VMWare team has instructions and a video available here. Want to try out Win7 RC1 with Boot Camp? There are instructions here. For Parallels 4 users, I was unable to find a good set of instructions, so if any TUAW readers can provide me with a link, I'll update this post.

How is Windows 7 RC1 as an operating system? It's faster than Windows Vista on my 3 year old iMac, and some features look surprisingly Mac-like. I'll leave it to you as an exercise to see how much you like or dislike it.

Raise your hand if you remember when a Mac was a Mac and a Windows machine was a Windows machine, and never the twain shall meet. I sure do.

Change has come.

Our own Christina Warren has written an exhaustive set of instructions for installing Windows 7 on a Mac over at our sister site, Download Squad. Windows 7 is in beta, so don't try and use it for any mission-critical tasks. Meant to be an incremental update to Vista (Snow Vista?), the current iteration of Windows 7 includes changes like a redesigned taskbar, enhanced touch performance and improvements when run atop multi-core processors.

While Intel Macs can run Windows 7 via Boot Camp, Christina points out that virtualization is probably the best bet for most users. She described how to set up an installation with VMWare Fusion 2.0, Parallels 4.0 and VirtualBox 2.1.2 (and the VMware team has posted a guide of their own for Win7 on Fusion).

If you're a Mac user who keeps Windows around for compatibility testing or that one proprietary Windows app you can't do without, and you're just itching to try Windows 7, this is the tutorial for you. If you're wondering what the fuss is about over on the Microsoft side, Engadget's deep dive on Windows 7 is a good place to start.

When it comes to virtualization on the Mac, it's mostly discussed in the context of running a variant of Microsoft Windows. This makes sense; the ease of getting Windows to run within OS X (on Intel hardware) is one of the key reasons many first-time Mac buyers are migrating to Apple. However, Windows is hardly the only game in town.

Although the annual proclamations of "the year of the Linux desktop" haven't really panned out, thanks to distributions like Ubuntu, more and more individuals are at least giving Linux a try. Today, Canonical made both the server and desktop versions of Ubuntu 8.10 (codenamed 'Intrepid Ibex') available for download.

Even before the Intel switch, PPC users could effectively run Linux distros on their machines, but virtualization coupled with Intel hardware has made running a VM of Ubuntu -- or any Linux distribution -- fairly painless. Using commercial software like VMware Fusion 2.0 or Parallels Desktop, or open source and free solutions like VirtualBox, you can set up an Ubuntu virtual machine much like you would with Windows.

If you have ever installed a Windows virtual machine, using Parallels, Fusion or VirtualBox, the process for installing Ubuntu is almost exactly the same. Download the Ubuntu 8.10 ISO image (a slow process today with the demand for the new release; it should speed up next week, and there are Bittorrent seeds for faster service) and then select that image for the virtual CD drive when creating your VM. The process, depending on your system, should take under 20 minutes from beginning to end.

Today, I set up a virtual machine of Ubuntu 8.10 in both VMware Fusion 2.0 and VirtualBox 2.04. Parallels Desktop works with Ubuntu, but I had problems trying to get Ubuntu 8.04 installed and am still reading reports of problems with 8.10. Parallels might work just fine with Ubuntu 8.10, but keep in mind that it might be kludgy.

Read on for more install options.

We first noted the open-source virtualization application VirtualBox way back in 2007, and since then this open-source competitor to VMware Fusion and Parallels has come a long way. Most importantly, perhaps, the project was acquired by Sun Microsystems and has now become Sun xVM VirtualBox with a great deal more support.

The application is free for personal use and is available for a wide variety of x86 platforms including OS X on Intel Macs. The feature set is extensive and includes a lot of the features of its commercial counterparts. That said, it lacks many of the niceties of those programs, including any kind of 3D graphics support. Nonetheless, it's hard to argue with free and is probably worth checking out if your virtualized Windows requirements are modest.

Sun xVM VirtualBox is a free download from Sun.

Thanks, Dean!

Parallels has been doing an amazing job with their Parallel's Desktop, and industry heavy-weight VMWare is also making waves with their Fusion client. So you might ask whether another competitor is really needed in the virtualization space. But this one, Virtual Box, comes with a twist: it's recently been open sourced, so we can presumably expect the open source community to pitch in and make it better.

Their OS X client is still at a very early stage of development, and no binary is yet available for download. But they do have instructions for anybody who would like to try building it (i.e. compiling from source code), along with a screenshot. At this point, this is more of a project to keep an eye out for, rather than anything approaching the solutions from Parallel's and VMWare. But new Open Source solutions are pretty much always good news in my book.

Needless to say, this is Intel only.

[Via The Mac Robotics Blog]

Thanks Roberto!