In this video, we review the minimum system requirements for Ubuntu Linux, the Hardy Heron build released in April 2008, these minimum requirements may seem trivial until you consider the number of installations being created on virtual machines. For example, if you have 8 gigabytes of RAM on a server, that may seem like a lot until your boss tells you to configure 32 virtual machines on that server. The minimum hardware requirement for installation in text mode, and that's just the installation, is 32 megabytes. But more is required for practical use of the actual operating system. I prefer at least 64 megabytes on systems without the GUI but as the UCP, the Ubuntu Certified Professional Exam, covers the Gnome Desktop environment, you'll install that GUI on your test system, and for that purpose, I prefer to have at least 256 megabytes of RAM. As for hard drive space, you generally should have at least 4 gigabytes of hard drive space available. But that isn't a hard and fast rule. For example, The Ubuntu JeOS build spelled j-e-o-s is a specialized build, JeOS stands for Just Enough Operating System and it can easily fit in a hard drive of less than a gigabyte, but that's a specialized build, customized for virtual machines. For this course, I have created an Ubuntu Linux system on a VMware server machine available from www.vmware.com, VMware Server is in my opinion, the best option for this course. When I prepare for certification exams, I use VMware Server. It supports relatively easy installations of various operating systems, including Ubuntu Linux on various Linux distributions as well as on Microsoft Windows. VMware server supports snapshots, in other words, if I change too many things and can't remember what I did, I can easily restore the original configuration through the snapshot. But of course, there are alternatives to VMware server. One example on Macintosh systems is known as Parallels and they've also released versions for Windows and for Linux. One system that takes advantage of the multi-core CPUs that are coming out is the Kernel based virtual machine, also known as KVM. But not all systems have suitable CPUs or suitable hardware so be careful. Specifically, you need hardware which supports full virtualization, KVM is functionally similar to Xen, which you may or may not have heard of, but that's not critical for the exam. The virtual box system from Sun Microsystems is also available from the Ubuntu Universe Repository. It's the open source edition of Virtual Box, and it's similar to VMware. I like that option as well.