VirtualBox is an utility which creates a virtual machine on your computer. Essentially this allows you to emulate another computer within your computer in a single file. The result is giving you the ability to test different Linux distributions without having to overwrite your current system. In addition you can run a version of Windows XP inside of Linux. The main reason why I do this, is because NetFlix does not support linux for their Instant viewing, and I don’t with to reboot my system into WindowsXP in order to watch their videos. However, sometimes I have noticed a significant drop in video quality while doing this.

Debian Lenny’s repositories includes the opensource edition of VirtualBox; however, to get the updated prepriotary version of Vitual box you can add the following to you /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian lenny non-free

Now add the keyring, update apt-get, and install:

wget http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc
sudo apt-key add sun_vbox.asc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.0

The install script will ask you to compile new headers. Afterward add your desired user to the vboxuser group and reboot for the new headers to take effect.

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