Q4OS Forum

TucsonDoug

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 3

Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

The more I learn about Win 10, the more serious I get about learning Linux.  The Q4OS guide suggests running Q4OS under VirtualBox, and I intend to use VB to learn about various distros.  Step One is to find a good lightweight host OS.  From what I could see, Q4OS should be an excellent choice - but when I tried it out, it installed VirtualBox version 4 even though VB 5 has been out for many months.
Could anyone recommend a better lightweight host for VirtualBox 5?  NOOB-friendly would be nice.
Thanks

Dai_trying

Member

From: UK

Registered: 2015-12-14

Posts: 2,993

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

with my pure debian installation I had to add virtualbox's own repo to my apt sources.list and then it was a case of installing as normal, if I remember rightly the information on how to do this was on the virtualbox website somewhere (sorry i didn't bookmark it).
I have to assume it would be ok to do this with q4os although I haven't tried it, maybe q4osteam could say if it will work or not.

Dai

TucsonDoug

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 3

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

Thanks Dai;
I wasn't able to install Debian on the system that I hope to use to learn Linux, due to lack of knowledge of how to overcome a hardware driver problem.  I'm hoping to use something as light as Q4OS as my host system, but I could use one of VirtualBox's "Officially Supported" distros if I can't find a better solution.  It's sort of frustrating that I'm not able to create the setup that I want to use to learn Linux because I haven't learned enough about Linux.
Thanks Again,
Doug

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,506

Website

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

Could anyone recommend a better lightweight host for VirtualBox 5?  NOOB-friendly would be nice.

It's easy to setup Q4OS as VirtualBox-5 host. Just run in terminal:
$ sudo qrepoadd virtualbox
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-5.0

bobby

Member

From: Nevada, USA

Registered: 2015-12-24

Posts: 459

Website

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

I went to our local thrift store and picked up 3 Pentium 4 computers for $30; total  cost.

I am  now using the best of those 3 computers to learn Q4OS and debian.

I have 5 hard drives in this computer case and I just switch cables to the drive (host) I want to run that day.

I am looking for 5 more drives

Last edited by bobby (2016-01-09 20:08)

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No Longer Using Q4OS

TucsonDoug

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 3

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

Thank you Q4OS team!  Support like that makes me SURE that Q4OS is the best distro for me.   It's unfortunate that you have to already know some things before you can start learning Linux.  Then again, I made things harder for myself by thinking that I needed VirtualBox to get started.  I'll bet that there would be more Linux users if every NOOB got help like that!

Just for my own curiosity, why doesn't Q4OS install the current version of VB by default?  Is version 5 still considered to be a bit unstable?

Thanks Again,
Doug

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,506

Website

Re: Q4OS as VirtualBox Host

why doesn't Q4OS install the current version of VB by default?

Q4OS is based on Debian, the distro that keeps rock stable versions of software in its default repositories. Debian doesn't update packages to the latest versions, instead maintains and patches default packages to be as stable as possible. If you need recent versions of software, you have to add external repositories in most cases. Default Debian prefers stability over updating to recent packages versions.