How to Install VirtualBox on Fedora 36

VirtualBox is a cross-platform virtualization software that allows users to run multiple guest operating systems on a single host machine. VirtualBox uses a hypervisor to virtualize the guest operating system, which means that each guest operating system has its own virtual environment in which it runs.

In this article, we’ll provide a step-by-step guide to install VirtualBox on Fedora Linux. At time of writing this article, latest Fedora version is Fedora 36. So, we have used Fedora 36 in this article..

Table of Contents

System Requirements for VirtualBox

Before we get started, there are a few things you’ll need to have in order to complete this process:

Minimal Fedora Workstation
At least 2GB of RAM
At least Dual Core Processor
25 GB free disk space
Sudo User with admin rights
Stable Internet connection

Now that you have all of the necessary prerequisites, let’s get started with the installation process.

Step 1) Install VirtualBox Dependencies

Open the terminal, run following dnf command to install VirtualBox dependencies,

$ sudo dnf -y install @development-tools
$ sudo dnf install kernel-headers kernel-devel dkms  -y

Step 2) Adding the VirtualBox Repository

Before adding the repository, import public key for virtualbox RPMs, run following wget command,

$ wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc
$ sudo rpm --import oracle_vbox.asc

Now add VirtualBox repository so that latest and stable version of virtualbox rpm package is installed.

Create a repository file ‘virtualbox.repo’ under /etc/yum.repos.d/ with following content,

$ sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/virtualbox.repo
[virtualbox]
name=Fedora $releasever - $basearch - VirtualBox
baseurl=http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/rpm/fedora/$releasever/$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
repo_gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc

save and close the file.

Step 3) Installing VirtualBox

Once the repository has been added, you can install VirtualBox by running the following command:

$ sudo dnf -y install VirtualBox-6.1

Step 4) Adding Your Local User to the vboxusers Group

During virtualbox installation, a new group named ‘vboxusers’ is created. Whenever we add any user to this group then that user can operate virtualbox without sudo command. So, to add your local user to vboxusers group, run

$ sudo usermod -aG vboxusers $USER
$ newgrp vboxusers
$ id
uid=1001(linuxbuzz) gid=976(vboxusers) groups=976(vboxusers),10(wheel),1001(linuxbuzz) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023
$

Step 5) Access VirtualBox

From your desktop environment, search virtualbox from search box,

Click on VirtualBox icon, we will get following window,

Perfect, above confirms virtualbox has been started successfully.

Step 6) Install VirtualBox Extension Pack

If wish to add additional features like support for USB 2.0/3.0, disk encryption, VirtualBox RDP and PXE boot for intel cards then you must install virtualbox extension pack.

First download the extension pack file using beneath wget command

$ wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/6.1.34/Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.34.vbox-extpack

Run following command to install extension pack,

$ sudo VBoxManage extpack install Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-6.1.34.vbox-extpack

Press ‘y’ to accept License terms and conditions.

As we see above extension pack has been installed successfully, let’s verify it. Head back to VirtualBox, click on File –> Choose Preferences –> Choose Extension