I'm a big fan of VirtualBox, the free virtualisation manager that allows you to run one operating system inside another. Whether you want to try one of the latest Linuxes without messing up your system, need to run a Windows app without having to reboot or are desperate to get an old DOS game running, you can access them all on whatever machine you're using now -- provided its currently running Linux, Windows, Macintosh or OpenSolaris.

Here for example is a beta release of KDE 4 and Windows XP running inside in my old Kubuntu 7.10 box...


(Click for a larger view)


I blogged about installing VirtualBox last year, but there's one thing many first-timers overlook; adding the Guest Additions package. This is an extra add-on that improves your virtual machine's performance and integration. The mouse pointer works more smoothly and a GA allows you to resize the VM's window and toggle full-screen mode. (As you'll see from this table, most OSs work much better when GAs are added!)

It's important to remember that Guest Additions have to be added to each virtual machine you create. Add 10 new Linuxes and you need to install a GA for each of them. Here's how...


Prepare your system:
In your host system, (not the virtual machine!), ensure you have the necessary building tools installed. Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Debian-based systems can simply type the following in a command window:

sudo apt-get install build-essential sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic

Open Guest Additions:
Start your virtual machine then click Devices / Install Guest Additions on the menu.

That's all you need to do to add GA to a Windows virtual machine, but it appears to do nothing under Linux. That's because Linux doesn't auto-boot anything you wave at it. You need to mount and run the GA manually...


Mount and run it:
Open a console window in your guest (virtual) machine and enter the following;

sudo mount /dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 cd /media/cdrom0 sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run

The first command simply mounts the virtual CD, the second switches to the CD drive and the third runs the Guest Additions package. Note that there are different packages for x86 and AMD64 machines. Type ls to get a list!

If you have problems with any of the above, you'll more details here.
  



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