How to Install Linux Mint Cinnamon VirtualBox (2025) | Step by Step Guide

In this article, we will learn How to Install Linux Mint Cinnamon VirtualBox on a Windows 10 PC. There are many good reasons to use Linux Mint as your operating system, namely that it is free and open source.

Linux Mint is a free and open-source distribution that you can install on your computer’s hard drive or run from a USB drive. It is based on Ubuntu and Debian with an emphasis on usability and the MATE desktop environment which is the continuation of GNOME 2.

Install Linux Mint Cinnamon VirtualBox (2022) | Step by Step Guide

This tutorial will show you how to install Linux Mint on VirtualBox on a Windows 10 PC.

Minimum Requirements

RAM: 2GB (4GB Recommended)
20 GB Free Disk Space (100GB Recommended)
CPU: 2 Cores
Linux Mint ISO

1. Preparing the Virtual Machine

Step 1: Open LinuxMint.com, and click on the download link. Select the latest version Linux Mint 20.3 and download the ISO File. The file is around 2.1 GB.

Step 2: Once downloaded, download and install Virtualbox on your Windows PC. Here is a guide that you can use: How To Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Windows 10

Step 3: Install the Virtualbox Extension Package. Use this guide: How To Install VirtualBox 6.1 On Windows 10

Step 4: Open Virtualbox and click add a new virtual machine. Set the following parameters and click Next.

Name: Linux Mint
Type: Linux
Version: Ubuntu (64 bit)

Step 5: In the memory size, select 4GB and click Next.

Step 6: Select Create a Virtual Hark Disk File and click Create.

Step 7: Select VDI (Virtual Disk Image) and click Next.

Step 8: Select dynamically allocated and click Next.

Step 9: For the hard disk space, select 60GB, and then click on Create.

2. Customize the Virtual Machine

Step 10: Click on the Settings button, and go to the General tab under Advanced. Under shared clipboard and DragNDrop select Bidirectional.

Step 11: Then under System, go to the Processors tab and select 4.

Step 12: Go to Display and select 128MB.

Step 13: Click on Storage and inside Storage, you want to select the empty disk over here, then click on the little disk on the right-hand side. Choose a disk file and this is where we need to go to our Downloads folder, where download the ISO image file, which is right over here then click on open.

Step 14: When we’re done doing the installation, you can just right-click on it and remove the attachment. So I’m going to leave everything else as is the rest of the options you can select and change and modify later on. Now just click on the ok button.

3. Starting the Virtual Machine

Step 15: Go to VirtualBox Manager and make sure that Linux Mint is selected and then click on the Start button.

Step 16: This is not an installed version, this is just a live version. What we want to do is actually double-click on the disk to install the operating system in a virtual drive.

Step 17: Continue with the installation wizard. You can choose the default setting and proceed with the final installation.

Step 18: Click on Continue, and now it’s going to copy over the files and install them. This might take a few minutes.

Step 19: Once the installation is complete and is ready to restart. Shut down your virtual machine completely.

Step 20: Select the virtual machine over here on the left-hand side, click on Settings, and then go into storage.

Step 21: Click on X in the corner, and start the machine again. It will ask for your password to log in to your Linux Mint.

Step 22: You can go through all the steps if you’re not familiar with the operating system and it will show you all the features of the operating system.

Step 23: Now install this guest edition CD image and what it’s going to allow us to do is full screen and it will give us a proper aspect ratio. Also, it allows you to copy and paste from your desktop into your virtual machine and drag and drop files so all these will be enabled once you install the guest edition CD image.

Step 24: Click enter key on our keyboard and it’s going to close what we want to do next is just restart our virtual machine.

Conclusion

So Linux Mint has been installed inside VirtualBox on a Windows 10 PC. I hope you found this article useful.

You can watch a detailed video tutorial below –