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I am doing a course on embedded systems, and I need to install Ubuntu for that. While searching the web for doing so I came across two forms in which the Ubuntu software is downloaded, namely the virtual disk image (VDI) and the ISO file formats. May I know the difference between these two file types?

karel
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huzefa.s
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2 Answers2

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  • A VDI file file.vdi is a file, that is made for virtual machines. It is typically used to provide a virtual file system by VirtualBox, where Ubuntu and other operating systems can be installed in a virtual machine.

    VirtualBox is an application program, that runs in a host operating system (for example Ubuntu or Windows). You create a virtual machine, and a VDI file to provide an 'internal disk' in the virtual machine, where you install a guest operating system. This link shows some useful details.

    Please notice that you can boot a virtual machine directly from an iso file.

  • An iso file file.iso is a file, that is made in order to create a bootable drive in a CD/DVD disk and/or a mass storage device (usually a USB pendrive or memory card but also an SSD or HDD). The partition structure and file system is iso 9660, which is read-only, and the idea is to copy/expand the stored file system into RAM, to run the operating system.

    Most main linux distros, including Ubuntu, provide hybrid iso files, which can be burned to a DVD disk and cloned to a mass storage device (usually a USB pendrive) and the result will be a bootable drive, that will run a live-only version of the operating system for testing and/or installing the operating system into an internal drive in the computer.

    This link helps with some more details.

sudodus
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When you mount an ISO file in a virtual machine like VirtualBox, it essentially converts the ISO image into a virtual disk image format, which in VirtualBox is called a VDI file.

Then the virtual machine can access the contents of the ISO as if it were a regular hard drive. Basically, to simplify, the ISO file appears as a VDI file once mounted.

ISO is a disk image format.

  • This is the standard format for storing the complete image of an optical disk, which can be used to create bootable installations.

VDI is a virtual disk format.

  • When you mount an ISO in a virtual machine, it is converted into a virtual disk format specific to that platform, like VDI for Oracle VirtualBox.
TheLostBoys
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