How To Install VirtualBox on Debian 10

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install VirtualBox on Debian 10 Buster. For those of you who didn’t know, VirtualBox is a program that allows you to install an operating system without changing your computer’s main operating system. This software allows you to create and run guest operating systems (“virtual machines”) such as Linux and Windows on top of the host operating system.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of VirtualBox on a Debian 10 (Buster) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 10 (Buster).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install VirtualBox on Debian 10 Buster

Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

apt update
apt upgrade

Step 2. Installing VirtualBox on Debian 10.

Now we import the Oracle public key to your system, which has signed the Debian packages. You can add these keys using the following commands:

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Then, configure the apt repository on your Debian 10 Buster system:

sudo add-apt-repository "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian buster contrib"

Once the repository is enabled, update the package list and install the latest version of VirtualBox:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install virtualbox-6.0

Step 3. Installing VirtualBox Extension Pack.

Another useful component of Oracle VM VirtualBox is the VirtualBox extensions pack which extends the functionality of the Oracle VM VirtualBox base package. To download the VirtualBox Extension Pack, you can use the wget command from the command line as follows:

wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.0.10/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.10.vbox-extpack

Run the following command to install the extension pack:

sudo VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.0.10.vbox-extpack

Step 4. Launching VirtualBox.

Once the installation is complete, search for VirtualBox in the system menu or open a terminal window and run the following command to open it:

virtualbox

Congratulations! You have successfully installed VirtualBox. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing VirtualBox on Debian 10 (Buster) system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official VirtualBox website.