News, Tutorials, Howtos for Ubuntu Linux
After 2 Beta and 1 RC testing releases, Oracle VirtualBox finally announced the new major 7.2.0 release.
VirtualBox 7.2.0 redesigned its main UI. Now, it has a left side-bar allowing to navigate between Virtual Machines, Extensions, Media, Network, Cloud, Resources, as well as Home to get started.
VirtualBox 7.2.0
VirtualBox 7.2.0 RC1, the third development release for the next major version of Oracle’s virtualization software, is available to download few days ago.
Compare to the last Beta, the RC1 release added explicit unattended installation support for Oracle Linux 10, while others are mostly bug-fixes.
VirtualBox 7.2.0
VirtualBox 7.2.0, the next major release of Oracle’s virtualization software, is now in second beta testing stage.
VBox 7.2.0 Beta 1 redesigned its UI with vertical menu options in left, allowing to navigate between Machines, Extensions, Media, Network, Cloud, Resources, as well as Home to get started.
It also added support running Windows 11 ARM as guest, and updated Windows installer with Arm virtualization support built-in.
VirtualBox 7.2.0 Beta
Oracle VirtualBox announced the first beta for the next 7.2.0 major release few days ago.
The new release of this popular free open-source virtualization software updated the Manager app GUI. Now, it has side-bar with vertical menu options in left.
VirtualBox 7.2.0 Beta
Oracle VirtualBox announced new 7.1.8 maintenance release on Tuesday with bug-fixes and support for recent Linux Kernels.
VirtualBox improved the Linux Guest screen flickering issue in the past few releases, the new 7.1.8 continued fixing the screen display issue on certain conditions, and finally marked that the heavy screen flickering on Ubuntu Guest with Wayland as fixed!
screen tearing and flickering issue finally closed
Oracle announced new Virtualbox 7.1.6 release this Tuesday with various bug-fixes, performance improvements, and minor new features.
VirtualBox had heavy screen tearing and flickering issue in Linux VMs running with recent Kernel and Wayland for a period of time, that’s why I switched to QEMU/KVM.
Since the last 7.1.4, VirtualBox greatly improved the flickering, black screen and other screen update issues. In the new release, it also fixed issue with Linux guest screen flickering when guest was using VMSVGA graphics adapter.
Meaning now recent Ubuntu, Fedora Workstation and other Linux with Wayland work great again in VirtualBox virtual machines!
screen tearing and flickering issue finally fixed
Oracle finally announced the release of new major VirtualBox 7.1.0 after almost 2 years since the last feature release.
The release introduced a new logo icon with flat design, and re-fined the UI with modern look and feel. The Preferences and VM Settings dialog now include Basic and Expert tabs that will show/hide some extra settings.
It improved the font in Settings/Preferences to make the text more easy to read, as well it provides a “Search Box” in the dialog for searching settings. And, each VM now has new splash screen at very beginning of startup.
VirtualBox VM startup splash
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
Oracle Virtualbox announced a new point release for the 7.0 series this Tuesday.
It’s VirtualBox 7.0.14, which add initial host and guest support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.4, though it’s still in development stage. As well, there’s a kernel panic fix for RHEL 8.9 running as guest OS.
For Solaris Linux, the guest additions can be installed into an alternate root path, and it no longer requires to reboot after uninstalling guest additions.
For macOS as host, the release added support for newer USB storage devices, and fixed memory Leak in the VBoxIntNetSwitch process when VM was configured to use ‘Internal Networking’.
The release also include OVF import/export improvements. They include import & export virtual machines containing NVMe storage controllers, and, export a VM which contains a medium inserted into a virtual CD/DVD drive which is attached to a Virtio-SCSI controller.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
