How to Install VirtualBox 7 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

In this guide, we will cover how to install VirtualBox 7 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish) system step by step.

VirtualBox is a free and open-source virtualization tool for desktop and servers. It allows the users to run multiple virtual machines of different operating system at the same time. It is a type 2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization.

Some of basic terminology used in Virtualization world are:

• Host Operating System (Host OS) – It is an operating system of the physical machine on which VirtualBox is installed or will be installed. Host OS for virtual box can be Windows, UNIX and Mac OS X.
• Guest operating system (Guest OS) – It is an operating system which is running inside the virtual machine.
• Virtual machine (VM) – This is the special environment that VirtualBox creates for our Guest OS while it is running. In other words, we can say that we run guest OS in a VM.

Prerequisites

• Minimal Ubuntu 22.04 LTS system installed
• Sudo User with admin privileges
• 4GB RAM or more
• Multi Core Processor ( 4 Core CPUs or more)

Without any further delay, let’s deep dive into the installation steps

1) Update System Package Cache

To make the system package cache up to date, run

$ sudo apt update

2) Add VirtualBox 7 Repository

VirtualBox 7 is not available in the default package repositories of Ubuntu 22.04. So, let’s first import virtualbox package repositories keys, run following commands,

$ curl https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | gpg --dearmor > oracle_vbox_2016.gpg
$ curl https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc | gpg --dearmor > oracle_vbox.gpg
$ sudo install -o root -g root -m 644 oracle_vbox_2016.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/
$ sudo install -o root -g root -m 644 oracle_vbox.gpg /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/

Now, run following echo and tee command to add repository,

$ echo "deb [arch=amd64] http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian $(lsb_release -sc) contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list

3) Install VirtualBox 7

Run the following apt command to install virtualbox 7 and its dependencies.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install -y linux-headers-$(uname -r) dkms
$ sudo apt install virtualbox-7.0 -y

Once the virtualbox and its dependencies are installed, try to access it.

4) Access VirtualBox

To access the virtualbox GUI, type virtualbox from Activity as shown below,

Click on VirtualBox icon, we will get following window.

Above window confirms that VirtualBox has been started successfully. Before start creating virtual machines inside the virtualbox, let’s first install extension pack in the next step.

5) Install VirtualBox 7 Extension Pack

VirtualBox Extension pack provides additional functionality to virtualbox like support for USB 2.0 & USB 3.0, PXE boot for Intel Cards, disk encryption and VirtualBox RDP.

To Install extension pack, let’s first download its file using beneath wget command.

$ wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.0/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.0.0.vbox-extpack

To install extension pack, run following command

$ sudo VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-7.0.0.vbox-extpack

You will be prompted to accept the License agreement, press ‘Y’ to accept it.

Above screen confirms that extension has been installed successfully.

Now head back to VirtualBox GUI. From the File menu choose Tools and then click on Extensions Pack Manager

Window above confirms that extension pack is installed and active. Now, we are ready to create virtual machines inside the VirtualBox.

Note: Please make sure VirtualBox version and extension pack version must match otherwise additional functionality will not work properly.

That’s all from this guide. I hope you have found it informative and insightful. Please don’t hesitate to post your queries and feedback in below comments section.