VirtualBox is a virtualisation manager. It allows you to install and run one operating system inside another. Here, for example, I'm running Windows XP and the latest KDE 4 beta release of Kubuntu 8.04 inside Kubuntu 7.10...



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Both operating systems are fully functional. At the touch of a key I can flip them into full-screen mode and work with them as if they'd been natively installed. They boot up and shut down just like you'd expect -- except that all happens inside a window -- or I can simply tell VirtualBox to save their current state to disk. That not only means that WinXP essentially boots in about 4 seconds, but whatever I was working on at shutdown is exactly as I left it.

So how do you make all this magic work for you? Just follow these steps...


There are two versions of VirtualBox. You'll probably find the Open Source Edition (OSE) in your distribution's repositories. There's also a Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) edition. The main difference between the two is that PUEL adds USB support. If you opt for OSE, USB devices won't work in your guest operating system.

Download either the binaries (PUEL) or OSE from here. It's also a very good idea to download the manual!

If you're going the binaries route, heed the instructions! Some additional libraries may need to be added to your system. In the case of Debian and Ubuntu, this is just a matter of adding a line to the /etc/apt/source.list file. (Details of what to add is at the bottom of the first download page.)

Select the appropriate platform and continue. You'll be offered the choice of using Sun's Download Manager (SDM) or just clicking to download the file. SDM didn't work for me. It started okay then got locked up displaying a license window so I just right-clicked on the .deb file and downloaded it manually.

After that a single click installed VB and all the required dependencies.


Up and running... almost

During installation, a new group is created called vboxusers. In order to run a virtual machine you have to make yourself a member of that group. Here's how to do so in Kubuntu;

1. Choose System Settings / User Management
2. Click the Administrator Mode button.
3. On the Groups tab, select Show System Groups.
4. Scroll down to find vboxusers, right-click it and choose Modify.
5. In the Edit Group box, scroll down to find the names of the user(s) you want to add, select them, click Add then click OK.
6. Log out an log back in.

Once you're back in, you can run VirtualBox from the command line or by clicking on the Start button and choosing System.



From here on in it's pretty straightforward. The VirtualBox GUI guides you through the virtual machine installation process and you'll find extra information in the excellent User Manual.

A couple of things you may overlook in your haste to get started:

• You can install other operating systems from either CDs, DVDs or .ISO files. That means there's no need to burn that latest Linux distro to disk in order to try it out.

• Once you've got a guest operating system up and running, click on Devices and choose Install Guest Additions. That'll add a number of extra features and enhancements (see the User Manual for details), including the ability to properly utilise the OS in full-screen mode.

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