My reasons for choosing particular software:

Host OS does not really matter, virtualization software can run on many differen
t platforms. If you desire so, you can run this whole project using Linux as a h
ost. Virtual Box is selected because it is an open source software produced by O
racle. Virtual Box at 3.1.2 was still owned by Sun Microsystems, who acquired i
t from Innotek and then maintained from 2008. Oracle maintains this product from
2010.
Why Virtual Box and not VMware? VMware is a popular product but I do not see a c
onsistency in their support of free versions of the software. In my experiments
with VMware I have encountered some obstacles while running Linux guests (partic
ularly in networking and CPU clock synchronization). Virtual Box is an open sour
ce product and quite a mature one, well documented and supported. So far I was a
ble to run OEL4 and OEL5 with no issues (even with no guest additions installed)
. I like the products built-in networking, it seems to be more flexible and stabl
e. These are all my personal preferences, of course.
Why Oracles Linux? This particular flavor of Linux is a modified Red Hat Enterpri
se Linux 5. Oracle has made a few adjustments that allow Oracle 10g R2 database
(32 bit) to install with no issues on it (usually, no additional RPMs required).
Since I am aiming to install Oracle in the guest(s) thus the choice of this Linu
x flavor. Besides, this Linux comes with OCFS2 and most of the ASMLib software p
ackages installed. If you have a licensing question about Oracle Enterprise Linu
x (OEL) I can answer it. You only need a license if you want Oracles support. For
learning purposes you do not need a license. If you will need to download some
rpm libraries and updates you can get those for free, the YUM configuration can
be pointed to a free repository (not discussed here).
Now the database itself. Which edition of 10.2.0.1 are we going to use? There is
no clarity in that article on this matter, for now I assume the Standard Editio
n will do. There are some additional pieces of software from Oracle (or used by
Oracle) to be installed, those are: OCFS2, ASMLib 2.0 and TAF.
Now that we know what we need to get started lets split the work into more manage
able mini projects, follow them just in this order, and hopefully all pieces wil
l fit: