Like the Windows Guest Additions, the Guest Additions for Linux are a set of device drivers and system applications which may be installed in the guest operating system.

The following Linux distributions are officially supported:

• Oracle Linux as of version 5, including UEK kernels

• Fedora as of Fedora Core 4

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux as of version 3

• SUSE and openSUSE Linux as of version 9

• Ubuntu as of version 5.10

Many other distributions are known to work with the Guest Additions.

The version of the Linux kernel supplied by default in SUSE and openSUSE 10.2, Ubuntu 6.10 (all versions) and Ubuntu 6.06 (server edition) contains a bug which can cause it to crash during startup when it is run in a virtual machine. The Guest Additions work in those distributions.

Note that some Linux distributions already come with all or part of the Guest Additions. You may choose to keep the distribution's version of the Guest Additions but these are often out of date and limited in functionality, so we recommend replacing them with the Guest Additions that come with . The Linux Guest Additions installer tries to detect an existing installation and replace them but depending on how the distribution integrates the Guest Additions, this may require some manual interaction. It is highly recommended to take a snapshot of the virtual machine before replacing preinstalled Guest Additions.