What is a Virtual Machine
Can you run an operating system (OS) inside another OS? What is the benefit of it?
Virtual machines are operating systems that run on top of other operating systems. You can run multiples of Virtual Machines inside a single physical operating system. The physical operating system is called Host operating system or Host machine, and the Virtual machine is also called Guest operating system or Guest machine.
Benefits of Virtual Machine
If you want to try a new operating system (for example, Linux) or a newer version of windows, then you can do so inside a virtual machine. Virtual machine gives you the flexibility to try out new software or operating system without messing with your host operating system.
In server environment, virtual machine is extensively used to manage resources allocation to web servers. With the rise of cloud computing, the usage of virtual machine will only go up.
How to use virtual machine in your PC
If you are using Windows operating system or macOS, you can use VirtualBox or VMware to install other operating system on top of your Windows.
Windows also comes with Windows subsystem for Linux functionality. If you want to try out Linux operating system, you can use this feature.
If you are a Linux user, you can install Gnome Boxes. You can also follow this blog to get a detailed step-by-step guide.