Debian 7 and Guest Additions

[loukingjr]

I just installed Debian 7 as a guest in VirtualBox. When it was installing it installed it's own 4.1.18 guest additions. I am running VB 4.2.12. My question is, everything works, shared folders, resizable screen, clipboard etc. Not only does it work, 3D works better than in any version of Linux I have installed using Gnome 3 or Unity or anything with Compiz. Not only that, it's the first time I've ever been able to take a screenshot inside a guest running Gnome 3 or Unity etc. What might I do to get any other guest to run this well with 3D enabled and why the difference?

[mpack]

I would assume that that's the GAs installed by the Ubuntu repo. Any questions you have about their fork of the GAs should probably be addressed to them.

[loukingjr]

I would assume that that's the GAs installed by the Ubuntu repo. Any questions you have about their fork of the GAs should probably be addressed to them.

Well my quesion is why the one's I've been installing all along don't work as well. I'm happy theirs work but normally I don't use a guest's additions.

edit: btw, of the hundreds of guests I've installed by now this is the first Linux guest of any kind that I didn't have to change the video output to X11 to get video players to work correctly. perhaps Oracle should ask them what they are doing to get their fork of the guest additions to work.

[loukingjr]

Update: Just to see what happens I purged the installed 4.1.18 guest additions that were pre-installed in Debian 7 and installed the 4.2.12 Guest additions. It broke Gnome 3 and acted just like the other Gnome 3 based distros I've tried. However, I uninstalled Gnome 3 then reinstalled it and it works fine. I haven't a clue why.

I noticed after purging the installed guest additions and rebooting the guest before installing the new ones, I got the message a different version was already installed. normally I don't get that message once they are purged and I have no clue why that happened either.