Installing Virtual Machine Software on Debian Linux

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is relatively simple to install, and it is open-source and free, consuming fewer system resources.

Install the Latest Version of Kernel Headers/Kernel Images

To avoid system issues due to an outdated kernel version, we need to avoid using the following common method:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Instead, use the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt-cache search linux-image    
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-xxx linux-image-xxx  
# replace xxx with the version number and system architecture from the above commands
init 6 # reboot after installation

As shown in the picture

apt Install VirtualBox

apt-get install virtualbox virtualbox-guest-additions-iso

VMware Workstation

Compared to VBox, VMware is more cumbersome to set up.

But I have no choice… I have more than 10 VMware virtual machines = =

Ahh.. Just felt too lazy to convert al of them

Install the Latest Version of Kernel Headers/Kernel Images

The first step is the same as installing VBox.

sudo apt update
sudo apt-cache search linux-image    
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-xxx linux-image-xxx  
# replace xxx with the version number and system architecture from the above commands
init 6 # reboot after installation

If you encounter this screen after installation, you probably missed this step

Install Various Compilers

sudo apt-get install build-essential

If you see this screen after running VMware, you probably didn’t install the compiler

Install VMware Workstation

Download the installer from the official website.

Give execute permission:

chmod x VMware-Workstation-Full-version-number.bundle 
# TIP: You can use Tab to auto-complete long file names

Run:

sudo ./VMware-Workstation-Full-version-number.bundle

To run the application, just type vmware in the terminal.

Troubleshooting

If everything goes smoothly, you can follow the prompts to finish this ~~happy~~ installation process.

However, I encountered many more strange issues.

If you also encounter these issues, you can refer to the following solutions

VMware had problems compiling and installing the vmmom and vmnet modules. After trying various solutions, I finally decided to manually compile and install the two modules.

Here are the specific solutions. You can refer to this official forum post.

First, download the module’s source code.

Since git clone didn’t work for some reason, we choose to download the zip file.

Download page

After extracting the source code, navigate to the source code directory:

unzip vmware-host-modules-workstation-16.2.1.zip
cd vmware-host-modules-workstation-16.2.1

Compile and install:

make
sudo make install

Restart the VMware service:

sudo systemctl restart vmware

As shown in the picture

After completing these steps, you should be able to run VMware Workstation normally:

vmware

VMware Workstation running

References

English translations by GPT-4