OUR EXPERT
Nick Peers has been playing with virtual machines for as long as he can remember. He’s tried most of them, but keeps circling back to VirtualBox.
Let’s lay our cards on the table. We’re not here to L show you how to use VirtualBox for the first time – we assume you’re already using it for whatever needs you have, from enabling you to give alternative distros an extended test to keeping an old Windows install on the side for apps you can’t live without and that don’t run in Wine or CrossOver.
Instead, we’re assuming you’ve been using the version supplied by your distro’s repositories, which likely means VirtualBox 6.1. In this tutorial, we’ll take a deep dive into the features unveiled in version 7.0 and now largely refined after more than a dozen interim maintenance releases. In addition, we’ll provide some tips to help you get the most from your VMs.
Get VirtualBox 7
The first step is to upgrade to the latest version of VirtualBox – the box (opposite) provides a précis of the new features on offer to give you a reason to upgrade.
You can download a DEB or RPM file of the latest release for your specific distro from www.virtualbox. org/wiki/Linux_Downloads, but you can also install it from a dedicated VirtualBox repo to take the hassle out of future updates, which appear every few months.
If you’re running Ubuntu, Mint or some other Debian derivative, the following(at time of writing) installed:
