Oracle VM VirtualBox is a powerful virtualization software package developed by Oracle and supported on many major operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS and Windows OS. The latest release VirtualBox 4.2.14 released on June 21, is a maintenance release with several bugs fixed and new items added.
A virtualization software is very useful when you want to test another operating hence creating virtual machines (VMs) for them. It also helps you to use other operating systems in virtual machines on your main operating system.
Installing VirtualBox
To start the installation, first open a terminal.
Copy and paste the following in to your command-line. Press Enter to download and install key from Oracle. Type user password and press Enter to continue:
$ wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
After Oracle’s Public Key has been downloaded and installed successfully you will see an OK message in the terminal.
Now run this command to add VirtualBox to your repository:
$ sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian raring contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list'
When prompted, input password and press Enter.
Lastly, run the combined command below to update your system and install VirtualBox.
$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.2
You can also change 4.2 to 4.1/4.0/3.2 in the command above to install previous versions.
After the installation have been completed you can now launch it.
Launching VirtualBox
Open Dash and type “Virtualbox“. Click on the VirtualBox icon to open.
For other Linux distros check these packages.
