These days, it’s quick and easy to set up an Ubuntu virtual machine so you can play around with Linux without formatting your system. But to really get the most out of your Ubuntu virtual machine, wouldn’t it be nice if the host operating system could communicate with the guest? That’s one of the things you can do with VirtualBox Guest Additions, and we’ll show you how to install it.

Before we get into the nitty gritty of Guest Additions, there are a few core concepts you should know to make sense of it. If you’re already well-versed in the language of virtual machines, feel free to skip to the next section, but if not, stick around a little longer.

In the opening paragraph we already mentioned the two most important concepts: host and guest system.

The host operating system is the actual operating system that runs on the "bare metal" machine. That is the actual physical computer. There is nothing between your operating system and the computer hardware.