Are there any tutorials/best practices for upgrading VirtualBox?

[UBotBuddy]

Thanks to everyone that makes this forum and virtual product possible. I hope that doesn't sound too "suck-upish".

I have been in here for a couple of weeks reading and searching as well as testing and I must say this app is quite awesome.

I have read that version 6 has been pushed out and there are a couple of new features that I would like to check out but I am surprised that there is no general tutorial for updating.

I would love to upgrade but I a bit leery when I read that some guests did not convert correctly or something was missing.

I must admit I have been dabbling in Linux on and off for years and by no means am I close to everyone in here (probably pretty distant by my accounts). But it sure would be nice to know what the proper path and best practices would be for upgrading VirtualBox along with any of its support packages.

Thanks for any comments.

Buddy

[socratis]

There's only one rule when upgrading/downgrading; make sure that your VMs are shutdown, i.e. don't use saved states. That's all.

[UBotBuddy]

Sooooo ... should I uninstall the current version and then install the newer version ?

sudo apt remove virtualbox virtualbox-5.2.18

then

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-6.0.8

Buddy

[mpack]

This is not a generic discussion. Moving topic to "Linux Hosts".

A complete uninstall can be a good idea (it's kind of the nuclear option) if you want a totally clean sheet, but is generally not required if you have been following along the normal VirtualBox upgrade route.

HOWEVER. If, as I suspect, you have previously been using the Ubuntu fork then you do need to completely purge that app before installing the genuine VirtualBox. These are completely separate apps, similar names notwithstanding. We have no knowledge of what is the same or different in the Ubuntu fork, we don't consider it our job to keep track of what third parties do with the source.