virtualbox dilemma.

Greetings forum,
I have decided to download oracle virtualbox and it is sitting in my downloads folder for the time being.
I have never used this program before ever so i am a little apprehensive about using it.
I understand i can download an ISO of any operating system to run in the virtual box.
This is where i am getting a bit stuck with this,Ive seen on a different website that i can download a 500mb iso of ubuntu os.
When i have downloaded this iso is it simply a case of using the downloaded iso to insert into the virtualbox or does it need to be burned on to cds?
500mb seems a lot of data to be burning to cd.
Im very sorry to trouble you with this as im a complete novice with virtualbox.
Could you help me with this dilemma please?

Kind regards.

You don't have to burn the ISO to CD. When you launch Virtualbox it will let you install a virtual operating system using the ISO file you have downloaded. There will be an option for that. It will simply mount the ISO and act as if it was a disc. The difference being that installing from an ISO is a lot faster than from an actual disc. I can't advise you specifically step by step, because I use VMWare myself, but it should be very easy to use.

Virtualbox is an easy way to run operating systems in a virtual machine, and playing around with it will not harm your "real" system in any way.

No you don't need to burn it to a CD.

Open Virtual box. Use the the wizard to create a virtual machine. Then click on the virtual machine you have just created.
To the right you will "Storage" Click on it.
Then you will see a picture of a CD with the word "Empty" beside it. Click on it.
To the right of that you will see "Attibutes" with a dropdown box and to the right of that a picture of a CD, click on that.
Then select "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file..."
Now find where your iso is that you downloaded. Select you ISO and click open.


You should read the VirtualBox user manual:
http://download.virtualbox.org/virtu...UserManual.pdf

VirtualBox FAQ
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/User_FAQ