Linux in A VM - Questions & help please!

dulpit

Hey, for college we use Suse Enterprise Linux through VMWare for one of our modules... We have a project that involves encrypting & decrypting stuff, and sending the files vis email, using the evolution email client & encrypting with gpg.

To save me coming into college next week, i was thinking of getting some distribution of linux & run it in a VM on my own machine... I have a couple of questions:

1. Is this an easy task? Like do i just need to download some distribution & run it inside in something like VMWare?

2. Does it matter which distribution to go with? All i need is to be able to use gpg & evolution, other than that it doesn't matter.

3. Is there any specific requirements needed to be able to run a virtual machine? I have a Vista (Ultimate) laptop - 2GB of RAM with (currently) ~ 40 GB of free space.

4. Am i missing anything? Any advice/help/pointers would be greatly appreciated...


Cheers

Sherifu

1. Yes
2. No
3. No
4. Create virtual machine, install distro from iso. Enjoy...

dulpit

Any recommendations for a particular distro?

Sherifu

For the stuff you mention Evolution, pgp, shouldn't be any problem which distro you pick.

dulpit

Ok, so I installed Ubuntu in VMWare, worked grand & it's installed and all... However I cannot access the internet, cos i need to use the wireless, which seems to be pretty difficult using a VM. After googling I found people talking about creating the VM in NAT mode, but i haven't a clue what i am supposed to be doing...

Any help? Or am i limited to only using wired internet?

Sherifu

There's a patch for it [depends on your vmware version]- http://liken.otsoa.net/blog/

dulpit

Em, it's not in English??

Sherifu

Scroll down. It says "(Translation into English below)" on the page.