VirtualBox Supported Host and Guest Operating Systems

xVM VirtualBox supports a wide range of host platforms and guest operating systems. In this chapter, the concepts of host and guest operating systems will be explained, followed by lists of currently supported operating systems within each category.

In the chapter entitled An Overview of VirtualBox 2 the fact that VirtualBox runs on top of a host operating system was explained. In the context of VirtualBox, therefore, a supported host operating system is an operating system running directly on the hardware of the host computer which is officially supported by Sun Microsystems for running the VirtualBox virtualization environment.

It is important to understand the distinction between a supported and unsupported host operating system. Just because an operating system is not listed as a supported host operating system does not necessarily mean VirtualBox will not run on that platform. It does mean, however, that if any problems are encountered using the operating system, there will be no help offered from the authors to resolve the problem.

Guest operating systems are the operating systems which run within VirtualBox virtual machines. The list of supported guest operating systems is much larger than the list of supported host operating systems. As with host operating systems, just because an operating systems is not listed as a supported guest does not necessarily mean it will not run. In fact, in the case of guest operating systems there is a good chance that even unsupported guest operating systems will still run within a virtual machine. There are, of course, limitations to this rule. It is not possible, for example, to run MacOS X in a virtual machine for the simple reason that MacOS X relies on proprietary Apple hardware and firmware which is not available in a VirtualBox virtual machine.

Before looking at the supported guest and host operating systems it is important to first cover some requirements related to running 64-bit guest operating systems in VirtualBox virtual machines.

Firstly, 64-bit guests require that the host hardware support hardware virtualization in the form of AMD-V or Intel-VT capable CPUs (see An Overview of VirtualBox 2 for more information on hardware virtualization).

In addition, if a 64-bit guest operating system is to run within a virtual machine on a 32-bit host (a feature now supported by VirtualBox), the option to install a 64-bit guest must be specifically selected for the target virtual machine.

The following table lists operating systems which are supported by Sun Microsystems as host platforms for running VirtualBox:

Operating System	Editions/Versions/Service Packs
Windows XP	All service packs. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Windows Server 2003	All service packs. All editions. 32-bit only.
Windows Vista	All service packs. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Windows Server 2008	All service packs. All editions. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Debian GNU/Linux	3.1 (Sarge), 4.0 (Etch) and 5.0 (Lenny). 32-bit and 64-bit.
Fedora Core	4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Gentoo Linux
Red Hat Enterprise Linux	4.x, 5.x. 32-bit and 64-bit.
CentOS Enterprise Linux	4.x, 5.x. 32-bit and 64-bit.
SUSE Enterprise Linux	9 and 10. 32-bit and 64-bit.
openSUSE Linux	10.2, 11.0, 11.1. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Ubuntu Linux	6.06 (Dapper Drake), 6.10 (Edgy Eft), 7.04 (Feisty Fawn), 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), 8.04 (Hardy Heron), 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex). 32-bit and 64-bit.
Madriva Linux	2007.1 and 2008.0. 32-bit and 64-bit.
Mac OS X	Intel only.
Solaris 10	u4 and newer. 32-bit and 64-bit.
openSolaris	2008.05 and newer. 32-bit and 64-bit.

In terms of Linux distributions not listed in the above table, VirtualBox should run on any distribution based on version 2.6.x of the Linux kernel. Support for distributions based on version 2.4 of the Linux kernel are not supported by recent versions of VirtualBox.

Supported Guest Operating Systems

Operating System	Editions/Versions/Service Packs
Windows NT 4.0	All editions and service packs (pack 6a recommended).
Windows 2000	All editions and service packs.
Windows XP	All editions and service packs.
Windows Server 2003	All editions and service packs.
Windows Server 2008	All editions and service packs.
Windows Vista	All editions and service packs.
Windows ME	Known to run but limited testing performed.
Windows 98	Known to run but limited testing performed.
Windows 95	Known to run but limited testing performed.
Windows 3.x	Known to run but limited testing performed.
Linux (2.4 Kernel)	Limited support.
Linux (2.6.x Kernel)	All distributions supported though some known problems exist with kernel versions older than 2.6.19.
Solaris 10	Fully supported.
OpenSolaris	Fully supported.
FreeBSD	Limited support.
OpenBSD	Versions 3.7 and 3.8 supported.
OS/2 Warp 4.5	MCP2 only supported. Requires hardware virtualization.