Smallest host OS for virtualbox binary install

[schoenborno]

I'm looking for the smallest free *host* OS that will support installing virtualbox 6 from pre-built binary. Here are the options:

1. Windows 7 64 bit (not free but I have a license)
2. Solaris
3. Ubuntu 18.04 / 18.10 / Debian 10
4. Ubuntu 16.04
5. Ubuntu 14.04 / 14.10 / 15.04
6. Debian 9
7. Debian 8
8. openSUSE 15.0
9. openSUSE 13.2 / Leap 42
10. Fedora 29
11. Fedora 26 / 27 / 28
12. Oracle Linux 7 / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 / CentOS 7
13. Oracle Linux 6 / Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 / CentOS 6

Note that my VM *guest* is full ie *not* headless, so the VM host probably needs a DM but can be minimal (i'd be fine with starting virtual box VM GUI from a terminal if such a host setup exists). Just enough to host the VM guest window

[socratis]

Just look at the requirements of each host OS. Then look at what distributions are available for the Linux distributions. One thing to remember is that 32-bit host support has ended with 6.x, so the requirements in terms of RAM (at least) have increased.

Win7 is going to be EOL in a while (2020-01-14, not even a year from today). I would go with a recent Ubuntu LTS release, like 18.04, but after a point it's more of a question "What do you feel comfortable with?"...

[andyp73]

I have no actual data to back this up but I think I would look at something like Devuan that doesn't use systemd as it's init system as it should be smaller and more configurable.

-Andy.