There are plenty of reasons to run a virtual machine. The first, and most compelling, is that you want to play: Maybe there are some other operating system you want to dabble with (cough Linux cough), but you don’t want to deal with installing another hard drive, partitioning your existing drive, or setting up your system a different way.

The Raspberry Pi is great because it's a low cost way to test all sorts of crazy electronics ideas, but sometimes you might want to test before you test. Virtual machines are a great way to do so, and Grant Winney has a guide for setting one up using VirtualBox.

For a while it appeared development on Oracle's virtualisation product, VirtualBox, had all but ceased. The start of April however has seen it given a new lease on life, with the company releasing a beta version of 5.0, packed with new features and improvements.

I've jumped between various virtual machines over the years -- Virtual PC was my go-to choice until Microsoft stopped supporting it and my needs grew beyond Windows emulation. These days VirtualBox and VMWare Player do the job, but a lack of major updates to the former could see the Oracle-owned VM left on the sidelines.

VirtualBox is a lifesaver for anyone who wants to tinker and experiment with different operating systems. Using a CD or disc image is easy in VirtualBox, but it's handy to know how to boot from USB in VirtualBox on Windows as well.

So you've gotten started with Linux, but you're looking for a new flavour besides Ubuntu to try out. Instead of installing a bunch of them from scratch, web site Virtualboxes provides a bunch of free Virtualbox images for you to test out, no installation required.

If you work with a lot of virtual machines and switch between them frequently, it can be handy to automate the process of launching them. RunMyBox makes it easy to launch specific VirtualBox virtual machines.

Tech thinker Anil Dash gets "uncharacteristically nerdy" and breaks down the process he used to install Windows 7 in Boot Camp — and then get access to it from OS X, without rebooting, using the free virtualisation software VirtualBox.

Virtual machines can seem juuuuust a bit too geeky for most otherwise computer-friendly people. That's sad, because it's an easy, free way to try or use a separate OS without messing with your hard drive.