This tutorial shows how to install the guest additions for Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint based systems that are running as Virtualbox virtual machine.

Guest Additions is an external package designed to be installed inside a VirtualBox guest OS. It enables closer integration between the host and guest OSes, including features such as shared folder, custom video drivers, seamless window mode, and more.

Guest Additions is not installed by default after installed your system as virtual machine. It’s however easy to install through the official CD image.

Ubuntu 24.04 Guest OS in VirtualBox

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This tutorial shows how to install Oracle VirtualBox in Ubuntu 22.04 and/or Ubuntu 24.04

VirtualBox is a popular free open-source tool for running different operating systems in virtual machines.

The tool is available in Ubuntu system repositories, but old. So, here’s the step by step how to install guide for latest version for beginners.

VirtualBox VM Manager

NOTE: VirtualBox so far only support x86_64 (amd64) CPU architecture type. Meaning for modern Intel & AMD CPUs.

Step 1: Download & Install the .deb package (Optional)

Oracle provides official .deb & .rpm packages for installing the software in Debian/Ubuntu & Fedora based systems.

User can select download the package by going to its website via the link below:

Next, open the Downloads folder, then either double click on the package or use right-click menu “Open With Other Application” and select open the .deb package you just downloaded via Software Install (or App Center). Finally, click install button to install it.

NOTE: The installing process may fail sometimes due to old package in your system, in the case, just uninstall the old one (go to bottom for how) then try to re-install again.

Once installed, search for and launch it either from start menu or ‘Activities’ overview depends on your desktop environment.

Step 2: Add VirtualBox repository to keep it up-to-date

The .deb package you installed via ‘Step 1’ used to automatically add the repository. However, it does NO longer do the trick in recent versions.

So, here’s how to do it step by step via the new Ubuntu PPA policy.

1. Download & install the key

First, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open up a terminal window.

When it opens, run command to make sure “/etc/apt/keyrings” directory exist:

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings

Then, run command to use wget to download key, dearmor it (so unreadable), and finally save it to that directory:

wget -q -O- https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes --output /etc/apt/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg

You can finally verify the key file, by running command:

cat /etc/apt/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg

As the screenshot above shows you, it should outputs unreadable text.

2. Add VirtualBox repository

Before adding the source repository, first run command to get system code name:

cat /etc/os-release

The apt repository so far only support Debian Stable (& old stable), Ubuntu 22.04 & 20.04 LTS (focal, jammy). For all their based systems, use the code-name you got via this command.

Then, in terminal window, run command to create & edit a sources file:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.sources

Then in the terminal window, paste following lines:

Types: deb
URIs: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian
Suites: jammy
Components: contrib
Architectures: amd64
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg

Replace jammy (for 22.04, Mint 21.x) according to last command output, such as noble for 24.04/Mint 22, focal for 20.04/mint20.

When done, press either Ctrl+S or Ctrl+O and hit Enter to save file, then press Ctrl+X to exit.

Finally, verify the sources file by running command:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.sources

It should outputs the content you just added into that file.

3. Update system package cache

After setup the source repository, run command to refresh your system package cache:

sudo apt update

The terminal output should print a line looks like:

“Hit:5 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jammy InRelease”

4. Install or Update Virtualbox

If you skipped the “Step 1”, then you can install it (7.0.x series at the moment) by running command in terminal:

sudo apt install virtualbox-7.1

Finally, when a newer release is out, you’ll be able to update it through Software Updater (Update Manager) tool.

Uninstall

To remove VirtualBox, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) window and run command:

sudo apt remove --autoremove virtualbox virtualbox-7.1

And, remove the source repository by simply deleting the key & sources files:

sudo rm /etc/apt/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.sources

Also, run sudo apt update to refresh package cache.

I’m using Virtualbox to try out different Linux Distributions in virtual machines. It always has 2 logo icons on Ubuntu dock: one for the manager, and another for VMs.

The VM and VM manager icons on the dock are totally same, causing me to make mis-clicks frequently. And, all the opened VMs are grouped into single icon on the dock.

If you don’t like this default behavior, then it’s easy to make Virtual Virtual Machines to have separate icon per instance.

As the screenshot below shows you, after following this tutorial, every VM will have its own system logo on Ubuntu Dock:

UPDATE: This tutorial ONLY works for Virtualbox installed from virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads.

Method 1: Disable virtualboxvm.desktop

The VM icons for Linux are handled by virtualboxvm.desktop file under “/usr/share/applications” directory. Simply disable that file will make Virtualbox VM (7.0.12 in my test) fall back to separate icon with system/distro logo.

To do so, just create an empty file with same filename under “.local/share/applications”. It will be taken in use instead of the one in ‘/usr/share/applications’ for current user only.

Option 1: Single command to create empty virtualboxvm.desktop

Ubuntu user can press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal, then run the single command below to create the empty file:

touch ~/.local/share/applications/virtualboxvm.desktop

This command should work in most Linux, though running command mkdir -p ~/.local/share/applications may be required first to create the directory.

Option 2: Use text editor to create empty virtualboxvm.desktop

For those who hate Linux commands, simply search for and launch a text editor window.

Then, it should by default open an empty file (if not create one). There open menu and select “Save as”.

In next dialog, name the empty file to virtualboxvm.desktop and save it into “Home > .local > share > applications”.

The change will be applied next time you launch a VirtualBox VirtualBox.

Method 2: Edit virtualboxvm.desktop

In case the first method does not work for you, you can configure the file to make it start VM as separate process.

1. First, open 2 “Files” windows. Then drag’n’drop virtualboxvm.desktop to local folder.

• In “Files” (aka nautilus), navigate to Other Locations -> Computer -> usr -> share -> applications, then, find out the virtualboxvm.desktop file.
• In another “Files” window, press Ctrl+H, then navigate to .local -> share -> applications. Finally, drag’n’drop the file to this folder.

2. Right-click on the virtualboxvm.desktop file in .local/share/applications folder and click “Open with Text Editor”.

When the file opens, add --separate flag to ‘Exec’ line. So it will be ‘Exec=VirtualBoxVM --separate %U‘.

For choice, you can change the icon to Icon=virtualbox-vbox, or replace with /path/to/whatever-icon that your want. However, all VMs will use the same icon on Ubuntu Dock.

How to Restore

To restore the change, simply delete the empty file either in your file manager or by running command in terminal:

rm ~/.local/share/applications/virtualboxvm.desktop

That’s it. Enjoy!