Virtualbox 64 Bits

[Amabella Batton]

Ihave downloaded and installed the newest virtualbox 4.3.20 for my Windows 7 (64-bit OS), but when I want to install 64-bit Linux, the New->Create Virtual Machine only displays 32-bit option, no 64-bit option. Could anyone give any clues about this issue? Thanks very much in advance!

If you want to emulate 64 bit apps on a 64 bit host, your cpu needs a feature for that. Which duDE says, is an intel-specific copy-paste. The same support exists on AMDs too, there its name is AMD-v - maybe he forgot to mention.

Had the same problem, only seeing 32-bit versions for the host OS's. Started working after updating asus p8z77-v pro bios to latest and enabling virtualization support. Before the bios update, virtubox showed only 32-bit OS's.

Using the guidance in the answer by @Leo Chapiro I was able to install Debian Buster 10 with Gnome on Windows 10 on a Lenovo ThinkPad. Here's the step-by step way I enabled the 64 bit option in VirtualBox:

Today, I am trying to build a minimal Linux virtual machine to run some Linux-only software in a Windows host machine. So the project is to have a VM that uses the least possible RAM and has the smallest possible image file (footprint) so that it doesn't take too much resources from the host computer to run. The software I want to run is Rapid Photo Downloader. Since I have discovered this program with my Linux machine, I have to have it also on my Windows machine! It is like a photographer's dream come true.

I am trying to use Q4OS 2.7 in 32 bits as I figure this is what would give me the smallest VM to run the intended software. However, I discovered that the automatic installation of the VirtualBox Guest Additions doesn't work in the 32 bits edition. Hence I need to use the virtual CD that is provided with VirtualBox.

I would also like to use the "pure" profile, as I don't need all the packages that are provided with the "base" profile for this minimal VM. It is quite significative to note the installation of the "base" profile does add about 1.8 Gig to the VM footprint - this is not negligible. The freshly installed VM in "pure" profile uses 1.4 Gig on the host HD, while it goes up to 3.25 Gig with the "base" profile.

Could anybody help me find exactly which packages I would need to install in the "pure" profile in order to be able to install the VirtualBox Guest Additions from the virtual CD? So that I can install only those packages that I really need...

If you are set on staying with VirtualBox you could check the apt log in the virtual machine that you successfully installed the guest additions and see exactly what packages were installed, then install them on your minimum installation individually until you hit a snag and then (if using command line) you should see which packages are causing the failure, and check the dependency list to see if you can install something to get it working.

Additional information.

I just succeeded by first installing Synaptic, and then I have been able to execute the commands to install the Guest Additions.

Looks to me as if the installation if Synaptic did in effect register the repos.

NOTE 1: At the end of installation you will likely get an error message "loadkeys is missing. Please install the 'kbd' package", this can be ignored as the installation should have been successful, change the screen size and you should notice it get filled to prove this point (no reboot required).

NOTE 2: During the installation of both the desktop and full profile packages are needed and apt is updated before installing the packages, but with the pure profile this stage is not required and therefore must be done manually.

You are right, I hadn't done the apt update and the apt upgrade. I didn't think these were necessary because this VM will not have access to the Internet and security would not be an issue.

Probably also that installing Synaptic automatically updated apt, which explains why I was successful after that installation.

Thanks - I will now build this VM and report back.

I rebooted and tried again, and still really slow! I think it must be something to do with the version of VirtuaBox (6.0.10) I was using, I noticed from the apt info that it was aimed an Ubuntu (bionic) so I removed it and qemu runs everything just fine, back to normal speed.

The process I followed is almost the same as yours except I didn't do the apt upgrade. The apt update in fact was sufficient to permit the installation of the Guest Additions.

After that it is necessary to add the username to the group vboxsf in order to have the shared folders available.

So clearly, Q4OS is the best that I have tested for building the smallest possible VM that will run Linux programs in a Windows machine.

If the programs that are to be used can run in a 32 bit environment, great, this is the smallest for footprint as well as for the RAM usage. However 64 bits Q4OS is almost as good, and so much better than other 64 bits alternatives.

I had heard good things about Manjaro, and decided to give it a try for this. Clearly Manjaro is not a good choice for a minimal VM in Linux because it needs so much RAM and its footpring is huge even if this was the minimal iso with the least applications installed by default. However it is very neat and pleasant to use. For a powerful computer that has plenty of RAM and a big hard drive, it may be a nice OS to have. (However I still have to test Q4OS with KDE!!!)

Now for the question of speed and performance of VirtualBox that was raised, I did get my chronometer out in order to get the right numbers.

It should be said this computer is not a bomb. It is a 7 year old machine with a dual core AMD CPU that runs at 3.4 Ghz. There are 8 Gigs of RAM, and I have installed a small SSD drive for the system partition, which helps a lot.

In reality it took 6 minutes to run the installation up to the first reboot, and another 3 minutes for the login and installation of the French language pack.

Then about 5 minutes for the apt update up to completion of the installation of the Guest Additions.

So, all taken, about 15 minutes to complete the installation.

You are very welcome, and the reason I performed the upgrade was for the kernel update which I think would be important from both a security standpoint (although not your biggest concern with this particular setup) and also it may have fixed bugs that could affect you, but quite irrelevant for just testing I guess.

There is an interesting post in the Debian User Forum titled something like desktop/window manager RAM showdown which I found interesting, some users there have some pretty slim desktops although I cannot see a full desktop that beats Q4OS on ram usage while maintaining the full usable desktop environment, most of the slim setups are using base installation with just window managers to keep memory usage down, but I could not imagine they have the ease of use/convenience that a full DE has.

I agree this is interesting discussion.

And it conforts me as I had considered using just a windows manager instead of a distro with a desktop manager.

What I see there is the gain in RAM would have been marginal by using openbox:

" Bare-metal Debian 9.8 32bit netinstall, openbox v 3.6.1-4, memory at bootup = 85mbs-ram according to the free -m "

This is probably the closest system to Q4OS 2.7_32

My VM is running idle at 105 mb RAM according to free -m, so the overhead of the Trinity desktop would be just 20 megs. IMO this is a quite acceptable compromise considering having Trinity does make things easier to setup.

There are a number of advantages to running in a 64 bit environment. The biggest is, as you say, the ability to address large amounts of memory. While you can get your 32bit kernel to address more than 4GB of RAM, individual processes will still be limited to 4GB. This affects not just "real ram", but their entire virtual address space...which is a particular problem if applications plan to make extensive use of virtual memory via mmap() or other techniques. The varnish http cache is a prime example of this. Discussed here and elsewhere.

There are theoretical performance advantages to a 64 bit systems caused by more registers, wider memory fetches (that is, more bits read per read operation), and so forth, but the data I've seen so far suggests that performance of 32 vs. 64 bits isn't currently much of a reason to select one or the other.

The only benchmarks I've seen to show a real virtue for 64 bit code was for mysql (and db in general), this was running on a Sun Ultra 5 (in RISC land, 32 bit is almost always faster by a little), if performance matters, it can maker a real difference.

I have installed the Virtual Box, and I would like to make a Debian virtual machine but I can't do this because my Virtual Box don't allow me to choose Debian x64. My computer and the .iso file are x64 too, that's why I don't understand why I can't choose it. How can I solve this problem?

If you want to use 64-bit guest support on a 32-bit host operating system, you must also select a 64-bit operating system for the particular VM. Since supporting 64 bits on 32-bit hosts incurs additional overhead, VirtualBox only enables this support upon explicit request.

On 64-bit hosts (which typically come with hardware virtualization support), 64-bit guest operating systems are always supported regardless of settings, so you can simply install a 64-bit operating system in the guest.

The only reason I know of is if you don't have a 64-bit CPU. The host OS doesn't matter, and if hardware virtualisation is not enabled (vtx in BIOS settings) you can still create the VM but it will tell you what's wrong when you try to start it.

As our home computers become more robust, we can do more powerful thingswith them. Virtualization isn't new; it's almost as old as computersthemselves, but the ability to run virtualization platforms on a typicalhome computer is relatively new and becoming more exciting every day.

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