1.4. Supported host operating systems

Oracle VM VirtualBox

1.4. Supported host operating systems

Currently, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems:

  • Windows hosts:[1]

    • Windows Server 2008 (64-bit)

    • Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)

    • Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)

    • Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)

    • Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)

    • Windows 10 RTM build 10240 (32-bit and 64-bit)

    • Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)

    • Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)

    • Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)

  • Mac OS X hosts (64-bit):[2]

    • 10.10 (Yosemite)

    • 10.11 (El Capitan)

    • 10.12 (Sierra)

    • 10.13 (High Sierra)

    Intel hardware is required; please see Chapter 14, Known limitations also.

  • Linux hosts (32-bit and 64-bit[3]). Among others, this includes:

    • Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS, and 17.04

    • Debian GNU/Linux 7 ("Wheezy"), 8 ("Jessie") and 9 ("Stretch")

    • Oracle Enterprise Linux 5, Oracle Linux 6 and 7

    • Redhat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and 7

    • Fedora 25 and 26

    • Gentoo Linux

    • openSUSE 13.2

    It should be possible to use VirtualBox on most systems based on Linux kernel 2.6 or 3.x using either the VirtualBox installer or by doing a manual installation; see Section 2.3, “Installing on Linux hosts”. However, the formally tested and supported Linux distributions are those for which we offer a dedicated package.

    Note that starting with VirtualBox 2.1, Linux 2.4-based host operating systems are no longer supported.

  • Solaris hosts (64-bit only) are supported with the restrictions listed in Chapter 14, Known limitations:

    • Solaris 11

    • Solaris 10 (U10 and higher)

Note that the above list is informal. Oracle support for customers who have a support contract is limited to a subset of the listed host operating systems. Also, any feature which is marked as experimental is not supported. Feedback and suggestions about such features are welcome.


[1] Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5. Support for Windows XP was removed with VirtualBox 5.0. Support for Windows Vista was removed with VirtualBox 5.2.

[2] Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1. Support for Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and earlier was removed with VirtualBox 5.0. Support for Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) was removed with VirtualBox 5.1. Support for Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) was removed with VirtualBox 5.2.

[3] Support for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox 1.4.