This page is a list of somewhat random tips on using Quickstart:

Ubuntu Linux WTF? Can I get a walkthrough? An intro?

Books (PDFs):

Videos/screencasts:

Make Quickstart full-screen

  • Press [Right-Control]+[F]

Share a folder with Quickstart

  • Create a folder on your local computer (Mac or Windows) called "shared" (or whatever you want, this name doesn't matter)
  • Modify the VirtualBox settings for Quickstart under "Shared Folders" and add the "shared" folder that was just created. Note that this change can only be done when the virtual machine is powered off.
  • Enter "shared" for the folder name, it HAS to be "shared" for this to work.
  • Make sure Auto-mount is NOT selected.
  • Power on the Quickstart virtual machine.
  • Now you should be able to see any local files in the "shared" folder in your Quickstart virtual machine under the "vbox-shared" folder.

You can also watch the Screencast on YouTube at ~6:00, where Mike talks about making a shared folder.

Fullscreen pop-up menu

You can move or remove Virtualbox's full-screen sliding menu

Move from bottom to top

  • Shutdown Quickstart
  • Open Virtualbox window
  • Right-click Quickstart on the list -> Settings -> General -> Advanced -> Show at top of screen

Disable the menu entirely

  • Shutdown Quickstart
  • Open Virtualbox window
  • Right-click Quickstart on the list -> Settings -> General -> Advanced -> Show in Fullscreen/Seemless

If you disable it, remember you can exit full-screen mode by pressing [Right-Control]+[F]

Making Quickstart faster

Change the number of cores available to the Virtual machine

  • Settings -> System -> Processor -> Processor(s)

    • I wasn't able to get multiple processors to work on my quad AMD 64. After setting the CPU's to 4, Virtualbox gave Quickstart one processor, that looked like four. Make an issue if you figure out how to do this.

Enable Acceleration

If your processor has support for these settings, you are best off enabling them as they will speed up the Quickstart virtual machine

  • Settings -> System -> Acceleration
  • Enable VT-x/AMD-V
  • Enable Nested Paging
    This might cause slow-down on the virtual machine, disable if you experience this