Virtual machines allow to run different operating system on a single box, A virtual machine is a program that run in an isolated partition on real computer(machine). As the name suggest virtual means it is not real, operating system install on VM do not run on real hardware. There are different software’s available for visualization, i will discuss virtualbox for this article. 

If you are using Linux or windows and want to create another virtual environment for another operating system, for Linux like Ubuntu based follow the tutorial below.

• First of all download the appropiate version of virtualbox, in our case virtualbox for Linux host.
• If you are using backtrack 5 than it is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (“Lucid Lynx”) download the file.
• After downloading open terminal locate the directory of the file and use the command to run the package.

sudo dpkg -i filename.deb

• After extraction use the command below to start installation.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

• Now its time to open the VM program, click on Application–>System Tools–>Oracle VM VirtualBox
• Click on New button the wizard will start, click on next than it will ask about the name type of operating system.

• Than it will ask you to set the memory 192MB is recommended, than click next.
• On the next window choose “Create new hard disk” and click next.
• Than follow the wizard to create the virtualbox, and than insert windows CD/DVD to start installation.

• The overall procedure to create a virtual machine on Linux is same as described above so if you want to create a virtual environment of ubuntu and the other version of backtrack even other distribution of Linux, use the same procedure but keep in mind you have to download the virtualbox package to look after your Linux kernel.