There are two versions of Virtual Box:
- OSE (Open Source Edition) which is in the repos
- Closed Source Edition, or Standard, or just plain “Virtual Box”

OSE does not have USB support. There are a few other features from the closed source version that aren’t included in OSE, you can see the list here. So, if you want to have USB support in VirtualBox, you need to install closed source edition and make a change to /etc/fstab. Here are the steps:

1. Remove OSE
$ sudo apt-get autoremove virtualbox-ose

2. Add the VirtualBox repo for Intrepid Ibex. Click System > Administration > Software Sources. Click the ‘Third Party Software’ tab. Click ‘Add’ and enter:
deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian intrepid non-free

Save the VirtualBox GPG key from here, then import it into Synaptic by clicking the ‘Authentication’ tab and then ‘Import Key File’.

Click the ‘Reload’ button in Synaptic to reload the repositories.

3. Install the latest virtualbox package (as of this writing it is virtualbox-2.2) by selecting it in Synaptic, or running this command from a terminal:
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-2.2

4. Add yourself to the vboxusers group:
$ sudo gpasswd -a YOURUSERNAME vboxusers

5. Find the devgid for ‘vboxusers’:
$ grep vboxusers /etc/group

It will return something like:
vboxusers:x:125:username

Add this line to the bottom of /etc/fstab, replace the devgid number with your devgid:
none /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=125,devmode=664 0 0

After you reboot you should now have USB support in VirtualBox.

Last tested on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

The command xrandr can be used to change the screen resolution from the command line. Execute the xrandr command to see available screen resolutions. The output will look like this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 240, current 1440 x 900, maximum 1440 x 900
default connected 1440x900+0+0 0mm x 0mm
   1440x900       50.0*
   1360x768       51.0     52.0
   1152x864       53.0
   1024x768       54.0
   960x600        55.0
   960x540        56.0
   840x525        57.0     58.0
   800x600        59.0     60.0
   800x512        61.0
   720x450        62.0
   700x525        63.0
   680x384        64.0     65.0
   640x512        66.0
   640x480        67.0     68.0
   576x432        69.0
   512x384        70.0
   400x300        71.0
   320x240        72.0

To change the resolution:
xrandr -s 1024x768

sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config

Select “Autohinter”, “Always” and “No” when prompted.
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

Add the following to ~/.Xdefaults (create the file if it doesn’t exist):

Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting:   true
Xft.hintstyle: hintfull
Xft.rgba:      rgb
Xft.dpi: 96

Add this command to your startup commands:
xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

Restart X.