VMPlayer and VirtualBox

[Guest]

Hi. I'm trying out Kubuntu having been a Windows user. I have dabbled with Ubuntu before but now want to use Skrooge on KDE.

I'm looking at testing on VMPlayer and VirtualBox on my Windows host.

Could anyone direct me to clear instructions on installing Guest Additions and VM Tools for Kubuntu 12.04?

Many thanks

Peter Jones
Crawley
UK

[dibl]

There will be no special instruction for Kubuntu, different from any other Linux distribution, as a guest OS.

[Guest]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that the vmware doesn't support the 3.x kernel regarding video drivers but virtualbox works perfectly well.

[dibl]

I'm running VMware Player 4.0.3 on a 3.4-2 Debian kernel today, with zero video issues. There is a known issue, and a workaround, to get the vmware modules to build correctly on 3.3+ kernels -- it's documented somewhere on this forum.

I don't use Windows as a VM host, so I can't say whether or not there are issues with a Linux guest OS.

[SecretCode]

Peter: have you installed either of these before, or are you coming from "zero knowledge"?

I haven't used vmware in ages so I can only really advise on virtualbox. The manual (at virtualbox.org) is very good.

See Chapter*4.*Guest Additions.

It's a good idea to install dkms and, although they don't mention it, build-essential.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install dkms build-essential

(The first two commands install patches and updates distributed since the Kubuntu ISO.)

In the virtualbox menu (for the started virtual machine), click Devices > Install guest additions. The guest additions virtual CD will be virtually inserted into the virtual CD drive of the virtual machine. It should automatically mount but (I think) will not by default automatically open or run. It will probably be at /media/cdrom, but it may mount with the media name e.g. /media/VBOX_4.0.12_12345. cd to that directory and

sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run

If you get an autorun prompt, by all means try it but it may not work OK from memory; in this case the command line is better.

[dibl]

It's a good idea to install dkms and, although they don't mention it, build-essential.

... and (also not mentioned)

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

if you haven't already installed the header files.