• Yes, both Virtualbox and VMWare virtual machines will boot from a physical partition provided they are started with the appropriate permissions (gksudo/sudo).

• The problem lies with Windows, in that its driver settings, particularly for storage devices, are not portable. Unless you modify the Windows registry to force start storage drivers for both the physical and virtual machines, you will mostly likely end up with a 0x0000007B STOP blue screen error each time which will require a restore or modifying the registry to fix.

See this guide for hints on how to do this and troubleshoot 0x7B errors if you want to try (it discusses physical-to-virtual conversions).

Finally, there is an emulator!

Using the Emulator

How to install on Ubuntu 14.04:

sudo apt-get install android-emulator
cp -r /usr/share/android/emulator/ ~/
cd ~/emulator/
./build-emulator-sdcard.sh

To run the emulator:

./run-emulator.sh

For Ubuntu 13.10 and older, you should just be able to install the deb from https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/android.

To update your emulator, run these commands:

cd ~/emulator/
rm -f ./out/target/product/generic/ubuntu-rootfs.tar.xz
./build-emulator-sdcard.sh

WARNING: Do not uninstall and then use apt-get autoremove on amd64. If you do, you will be left in an unbeatable state. Follow the instructions on the wiki to fix you system.

For more details or how to build from source, see the wiki page.

Other Methods

However, using the emulator can be to complex if you just want to run a an app or test the unity8 shell. So, there are two other methods:

1. Running Ubuntu Touch Apps

You can now install the core touch applications directly on an computer running Ubuntu 12.10 or later (or one of the derivatives, such as Kubuntu) using a PPA.

First, add the Core Apps Daily PPA by running these commands in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-touch-coreapps-drivers/daily
sudo apt-get update

Then install the apps you want by running:

sudo apt-get install <app-name>

Or you can install all of them using

sudo apt-get install touch-coreapps

Here is a list of the core apps available:

• ubuntu-calculator-app
• calendar-app
• ubuntu-clock-app
• ubuntu-weather-app
• ubuntu-docviewer-app
• ubuntu-emailclient-app (not working yet)
• ubuntu-filemanager-app
• ubuntu-rssreader-app
• ubuntu-terminal-app
• stock-ticker-mobile-app
• dropping-letters
• sudoku-app
• music-app

For more information, see this article on http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/.

2. Running the Unity 8 Shell

It is possible to run the mobile interface for Unity 8 on the desktop if you're running Ubuntu 13.10. To do this, install the unity8 package, either by clicking on the link or by typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install unity8

To run it, use this command:

unity8 -mousetouch

Unfortunately, there is no way to run apps in the shell. Clicking on a desktop app will open it in its own window and clicking on a Ubuntu Touch app will do nothing.