Installation of Lubuntu on Oracle Virtual Box and Making it work in Full-Screen Mode
To get started, a brief introduction to what is Lubuntu?
Lubuntu is a fast and lightweight operating system with a clean and easy-to-use user interface. It is a Linux system, that uses the minimal desktop LXDE/LXQT, and a selection of light applications. Because of this, Lubuntu has very low hardware requirements. Lubuntu was founded by Mario Behling and has been grown for many years by Julien Lavergne.
For our work, lets download the Lubuntu ISO Release — 20.04.4 LTS (Focal Fossa)
What is Oracle VM Virtual Box ?
VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware, targeted at server, desktop and embedded use. For a thorough introduction to virtualization and VirtualBox, please refer to the online version of the VirtualBox User Manual’s first chapter.
For our work, let us Install the Oracle VM Virtual Box 6.1.
Getting Started
Once you have installed the Oracle VM Virtual Box, run the program and click on ‘New’ Virtual Machine. Please select the following Type and Version for Lubuntu and click ‘Next’.
You can then assign a Memory Size for use, this shall be your RAM memory which shall be allocated to the virtual machine. For better performance, please select and give a higher or equivalent value to 2048 MB and click ‘Next’.
Create a VDI with a size of at least ‘10 GB’ . After a few more prompts you should be done and your new virtual machine should appear in the list on the left side of the Virtual Box window.
Select Lubuntu VM and click Start, Select the startup disk as the .iso file we have downloaded above for Lubuntu. Select the language of your choice and voila! you have a running instance of live Lubuntu. You can install Lubuntu on your Virtual VM by clicking Install Lubuntu 20.* LTS icon on VM live desktop.
Please follow the Instruction on Installation screen and Install the Lubuntu. Once the installation finishes, hit ‘Restart Now’. You shall see the message “Please remove the installation media…” pops up, simply hit ‘Return’ and watch your virtual machine reset and then boot into your new Lubuntu system. The first pop-up message on Screen shall again ask for an update, Simply click the ‘Install Updates’ button and authenticate with your password, it shall update all the necessary application packages. It shall ask for a reboot at the end of the update, please finish the reboot and enjoy an up-to-date Lubuntu system.
However, as you might encounter that Lubuntu is running on a small miniature screen in a virtual box, in the next steps we shall fix this issue.
How to make Lubuntu run in full-screen mode on Virtual Box?
Open terminal inside Lubuntu and run the following commands
sudo apt update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
The build-essential package actually belongs to Debian. It is not a piece of software in itself. It contains a list of packages that are required to create a Debian package (deb). These packages are libc, gcc, g++, make, dpkg-dev etc. The build-essential package contains those required packages as dependencies, so when you install build-essential, you install all those packages in one single command. Once the update and installation of latest build is done, hit the following command on terminal
sudo apt install linux-header-$(uname -r) build-essential dkms
Once the above command is successful, go to ‘Devices’ on the Oracle VM Virtual Box → Insert the Guest Additions CD image → It will add the ‘VBox_GAs_6.1.32’ onto your Lupuntu device. Open it in a terminal and run the following command
sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
This will install the VirtualBox Guest Additions. After successful completion Restart the Lupuntu. Use command ‘reboot’ from the terminal itself.
sudo reboot
Resize the screen if you are still seeing the compact display. And Goto ‘View’ Option on Oracle VM Virtual Box and Select Full Screen.
Voila! it's done. Enjoy!
