A new version of the popular virtualization software - VirtualBox - has been released. The new release, VirtualBox 4.0.8, addresses a very important thing missing from the earlier release. With this release GNOME Shell finally works inside VirtualBox.

With support for Unity being introduced in the last release, the GNOME Shell support in this release is indeed a very important feature.

Install VirtualBox 4.0.8 in Ubuntu 11.04

VirtualBox 4.0.8 is not available in the main Ubuntu repository. So to install it you have to add the VirtualBox repository first. To do it, open the Terminal and open the file /etc/apt/sources.list.

$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Now, add the line given below in the file. Then save and close it.

deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian natty contrib

After the VirtualBox repository has been added, register the Oracle public key with the command

$ wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Now, update the software list and install VirtualBox 4.08.

$ sudo apt-get update

$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-4.0

VirtualBox for Windows

VirtualBox 4.0.8 is also available for Windows and can be downloaded from here. Install the .exe file as usual.

How to make GNOME Shell work

To make GNOME Shell work in VirtualBox, you need to enable the 3D Compositing. If you have read our article on how to get Unity working in VirtualBox, you should be familiar with the steps.

- First of all create a virtual machine.

- Right click on it and click on Settings. Under Settings, go to Display > Video.

- Enable 3D Acceleration.

- Now install the Guest OS on the virtual machine. Right now Fedora 15 comes with GNOME Shell by default and, if you want, you can install Ubuntu 11.04 and install GNOME Shell on it too.