Hello,
I am new to Linux, and I am going to install a Linux version of OS onto an external hard drive, so that I can run it through Oracle VirtualBox. From what I saw on the Internet of system requirements, 512 MB of RAM should be enough (I have 1.9 GB of RAM on my system in total). However, I do have a question about the external hard drive on which I would be mapping the Linux OS: is an 8 GB pen drive enough for this purpose? Or should I buy an external drive with bigger capacity? Also, should I look for any other parameter while buying the hard drive?
I would also like suggestions about the flavour of Linux recommended to install, if any. My usage will be initially limited to running Perl, R and bash scripts for corpus generation and processing: I am not likely to do huge corpus searches for the time being. (I think once I reach that stage, I may eventually buy another laptop, Linux having all of it to itself.)
I have yet one more question: as I will be running everything through a virtual machine, what happens to the files I create: do they get destroyed when I exit (or saved if I save the machine state in VM?)? Is it possible to save them somewhere that I can access them later for both read and write from my Windows environment? (I am of course the administrator as well of my machine.) What about anything I install (say, Lynx browser) in the Linux environment?
Thanks a lot in advance!
I am new to Linux, and I am going to install a Linux version of OS onto an external hard drive, so that I can run it through Oracle VirtualBox. From what I saw on the Internet of system requirements, 512 MB of RAM should be enough (I have 1.9 GB of RAM on my system in total). However, I do have a question about the external hard drive on which I would be mapping the Linux OS: is an 8 GB pen drive enough for this purpose? Or should I buy an external drive with bigger capacity? Also, should I look for any other parameter while buying the hard drive?
I would also like suggestions about the flavour of Linux recommended to install, if any. My usage will be initially limited to running Perl, R and bash scripts for corpus generation and processing: I am not likely to do huge corpus searches for the time being. (I think once I reach that stage, I may eventually buy another laptop, Linux having all of it to itself.)
I have yet one more question: as I will be running everything through a virtual machine, what happens to the files I create: do they get destroyed when I exit (or saved if I save the machine state in VM?)? Is it possible to save them somewhere that I can access them later for both read and write from my Windows environment? (I am of course the administrator as well of my machine.) What about anything I install (say, Lynx browser) in the Linux environment?
Thanks a lot in advance!