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I'm (currently) running Ubuntu 20.04. Looking at the Virtual Box release cadence it appears that a new release comes out each month. When I start Virtual Box it reminds me that a new release is available.

When I research how to upgrade Virtual Box it appears that I need to uninstall the old one and then install the new one. While this is understandable from a conceptual perspective it seems to be more work than one could consider reasonable to stay on the latest updates.

Is there an easy way to keep Virtual Box up-to-date or someway include the updates as part of the regular system updates?

Bonus answer material: I think that it would be helpful for everyone if someone could explain how a product like VSCode is distributed such that it is automatically updated as part of system updates and something like Virtual Box is not.

Guy
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1 Answers1

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Virtualbox has Ubuntu-friendly repositories available as described on their website. To repeat their directions (focusing on Focal):

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb [arch=amd64] https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian focal contrib

The Oracle public key for apt-secure can be downloaded and added with:

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

To install VirtualBox, do

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install virtualbox-6.1

This will now be updated along with your normal system updates.

Brian Turek
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