I wanted to install Xubuntu on my late 2008 Macbook air and I found this file taking up 47 GB on my drive that ended with .sparsebundle. Can anyone explain to me what this file actually is? If I deleted it, would it do anything bad to my computer?
It's your Time Machine backup. It sounds like you have had at some point Time Machine running and it created backups of a device. You can delete it if you don't need the backups.
I wanted to install Xubuntu on my late 2008 Macbook air and I found this file taking up 47 GB on my drive that ended with .sparsebundle. Can anyone explain to me what this file actually is? If I deleted it, would it do anything bad to my computer?
If you don't need the space immediately, just leave it alone. Local snapshots are self-policing and they'll only take up space when it's available - if space gets tight, Time Machine will clear out snapshots to free up room.