VirtualBox

Updated 28 January 2026

There are at least four different virtual machine software packages available for Linux. This is one of them. It's fairly easy to install it from the VirtualBox website. Just install the latest version, and also the extension pack.

Unfortunately, as I write this, it doesn't work with the latest kernel. I have to select the previous kernel when booting up to use it.

After Installation

My username has to be added to the vboxusers group. If I don't do this, some things won't function properly, such as USB 3 devices. At the terminal:

    sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER

Guest Machines

If I want to share clipboards or folders, I have to do this on each guest machine:

    sudo usermod -aG vboxsf $USER

External, Portable Drives

It's extremely easy to use VirtualBox to install Linux distributions on external drives. The VirtualBox settings have to be correct, of course. The external drive has to be added to the USB drives section. It sometimes takes more than one try to identify the device. You cannot have created a VirtualBox storage drive on the host, so the application will only look for drives available outside the host.

Using VirtualBox this way saves me the trouble of installing ISO files on flash drives. I can't emphasize enough how much time it has saved me when testing distributions that won't work as virtual machines.