Last Updated on 28/12/2019 by Grant Little
Recently I purchased a Dell XPS 13. Rather than use the provided Windows 10 I decided to wipe it and install Linux on it.
My preferred Linux favour for the desktop is currently Linux Mint. However, I immediately hit a problem on this laptop. I simply couldn’t get the Live USB to load. I did quite a bit of searching the internet and found that this is not an uncommon problem for this particular laptop and Linux Mint. For example here is a forum topic I found.
Although Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu I found I had no problem installing Ubuntu.
Anyway, back on to topic.
I still wanted to be able to run a Windows 10 installation via a virtual machine. To do this I installed VirtualBox using the apt on the command line.
sudo apt install virtualboxAs much as this did indeed install an installation of VirtualBox. I couldn’t find the option to “Insert Guest Additions CD Image” which usually lies underneath the “Devices” menu option. I wanted access to the latest video drivers etc so I wanted to install these. After doing a bit of searching I found that the version made available via apt is the Open Source implementation and is missing many of the options available in comparison to the version available directly from Oracle.
Now it is possible to go to the Oracle website and download the Guest Additions CD image. However, I thought I would use the complete Oracle version. To install this I followed the instructions on the VirtualBox website. These can be found here.
Once completed I had easy access to install the Guest Additions CD and yet still maintain VirtualBox via apt.