Installing VirtualBox 3.0 On A Fedora 11 Desktop

Version 1.0
Author: Falko Timme
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This tutorial shows how you can install Sun VirtualBox 3.0 (released on June 30, 2009) on a Fedora 11 desktop. With VirtualBox you can create and run guest operating systems ("virtual machines") such as Linux and Windows under a host operating system. There are two ways of installing VirtualBox: from precompiled binaries that are available for some distributions and come under the PUEL license, and from the sources that are released under the GPL. This article will show how to set up VirtualBox 3.0 from the precompiled binaries.

As of version 2.0 VirtualBox supports 32 and 64bit host and guest operating systems (if you want to install 64bit guests your processor must support hardware virtualization and, of course, the host operating system must be 64bit as well).

This document comes without warranty of any kind! I want to say that this is not the only way of setting up such a system. There are many ways of achieving this goal but this is the way I take. I do not issue any guarantee that this will work for you!

 

Installing VirtualBox From Precompiled Binaries

Before we install VirtualBox, we have to find out if we are on a 32bit or a 64bit system. To do this, open a terminal (Applications > System Tools > Terminal)...

... and run:

uname -m

This tells you if you are on a 32- or 64bit system. I, for example, am on a 32bit system:

[falko@localhost ~]$ uname -m
i686
[falko@localhost ~]$

Now open Firefox and go to http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads and select the VirtualBox version for Fedora 11. Make sure you select the right version for your architecture (i386 for 32bit systems and AMD64 for 64bit systems):

Select Open with Package Installer (default) in the Firefox download dialogue:

After the download has finished, the following dialogue will appear. Click on Install:

Type in the root password:

You will see a warning that the VirtualBox package is not signed by a trusted provider. Click on Force Install...

... and type in the root password again:

Afterwards the VirtualBox package and its dependencies are being installed:

That's it! VirtualBox is installed now.

To start VirtualBox, go to Applications > System Tools > Sun VirtualBox (if you don't see the VirtualBox launcher, log out of the desktop and back in again):

When you start VirtualBox for the first time, you are prompted to accept its license:

Afterwards, you can register your VirtualBox installation. You can click on Cancel if you don't want to do this (VirtualBox will work nonetheless).

That's it! You can now use VirtualBox to create virtual machines:

 

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