This article shows you how to run and use Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1 on your Debian 11 computer to run operating systems such as Windows 10 on the virtual machine.
VirtualBox is a virtualization software developed by Oracle and offered to users free of charge. You can create virtual computers by installing this software on both a Microsoft-based system and a Linux-based distribution.
Suppose you have installed Debian from Linux distributions on your physical computer, and you need a Windows 10 or older system. In that case, you can use a virtual machine instead of installing a dual OS.
You can follow this video tutorial or the steps below to install Oracle virtual machine software on 11 Bullseye, the latest version of Debian.
Step 1: To download Oracle VM VirtualBox to your PC, visit https://www.virtualbox.org/ and click Download.
Step 2: When redirected to the download website, click Linux Distributions in the Windows or Linux platforms list.
Step 3: You will see Debian and other Linux distributions on the platform page. Click on whichever Linux distribution and version is installed on your physical PC.
Step 4: Download the setup file with the deb extension from the VirtualBox website and save it to a location.
Step 5: Open the terminal and update Debian software repo addresses with the sudo apt update command.
sudo apt update
Step 6: Run the command sudo apt install build-essential dkms to install the necessary Linux kernels for Oracle VirtualBox.
sudo apt install build-essential dkms
Step 7: After downloading and compiling the Linux kernels, you can install VirtualBox. Run the cd ~/Downloads command to the location where you downloaded the deb package.
cd ~/Downloads
Step 8: To install the OracleVirtualBox.deb package, run the command sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-6.1_6.1.34-150636.1~Debian~bullseye_amd64.deb in the terminal.
sudo dpkg -i virtualbox-6.1_6.1.34-150636.1~Debian~bullseye_amd64.deb
Step 9: If you see an error in the terminal output that dependent packages should also be installed, run the sudo apt install -f command to install these packages on your system automatically.
sudo apt install -f
Step 10: After installing the VirtualBox virtualization software, you can run it with the virtualbox command in the terminal.
virtualbox
Step 11: You must also install the Extension Pack for guest machines that you will use in the Oracle software. To download this package, view https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads again and click the All Supported Platforms link.
Step 12: After downloading the Extension Pack, open the downloaded directory and double-click the setup file to start the installation.
Step 13: When the VirtualBox – Question window opens, click Install.
Step 14: Accept the license terms and wait for the installation to complete.
Step 15: After installing the extension package, open File / Preferences from the VirtualBox tool menu and check that the box is integrated into the Extensions section.
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