This chapter provides the information and steps to install and configure VirtualBox on Linux, and also detailed steps to start, update, and remove VirtualBox from the Linux OS.
The following are the basic requirements for VirtualBox:
- Processor: Any recent AMD/Intel processor is fine to run VirtualBox.
- Memory: This is dependent on the size of the RAM that is required for the host OS, plus the amount of RAM needed by the guest OS. In my test environment, I am using 4 GB RAM and going to run Oracle Enterprise Linux 6.2 as the guest OS.
- Hard disk space: VirtualBox doesn’t need much space, but you need to plan out how much the host OS needs and how much you need for the guest OS.
- Host OS: You need to make sure that the host OS is certified to run VirtualBox.
At the time of writing this book, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems:
The following Microsoft Windows operating systems are compatible to run as host OS for VirtualBox:
- Windows XP, all service packs (32-bit)
- Windows Server 2003 (32-bit)
- Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)
- Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)
The following Mac OS X operating systems are compatible to run as host OS for VirtualBox:
- 10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit)
- 10.7 (Lion, 32-bit and 64-bit)
- 10.8 (Mountain Lion, 64-bit)
The following Linux operating systems are compatible to run as host OS for VirtualBox:
- Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny) and 6.0 (squeeze)
- Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 and 5, Oracle Linux 6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, 5, and 6
- Fedora Core 4 to 17
- Gentoo Linux
- openSUSE 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 12.1, and 12.2
- Mandriva 2010 and 2011
Both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Solaris are supported with some limitations. Please refer to www.virtualbox.org for more information. The following host OS are supported:
- Solaris 11 including Solaris 11 Express
- Solaris 10 (update 8 and higher)
You need to make sure that the guest OS is certified to run on VirtualBox. VirtualBox supports the following guest operating systems:
- Windows 3.x
- Windows NT 4.0
- Windows 2000
- Windows XP
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- DOS
- Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, and 3.7)
- Solaris
- OpenSolaris
- OpenBSD