linux mint – What’s wrong with my attempt to upgrade virtualbox to “latest stable” version?

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I have Linux Mint 22.4. Apparently this is based on Ubuntu 24.04. Normally I would ask this question in the Linux Mint forum, which is usually very good. At the moment it is suffering from an absolutely diabolical availability issue, apparently caused by something called “SUCURI”, which I believe is something like CloudFlare, only (judging by my experience yesterday and today), far worse, making the site currently virtually unusable and driving me insane.

So I am pretty new at Linux. I installed VirtualBox using Software Manager (which I believe is pretty much the same as apt-get). The version is 7.0, but this is WAY old. The latest version is 7.2.4. My current understanding is that I therefore need to install a PPA (or PPA source reference) and then upgrade using that.

I found this page: www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

I added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg] https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian noble contrib

(NB my understanding is that “noble” is the nickname of Ubuntu 24.04)

Then I ran this

sudo wget -O- https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | sudo gpg --yes --output /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg --dearmor

Then I did this:

sudo apt-get update

And then this:

mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-7.2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package virtualbox-7.2
E: Couldn't find any package by glob 'virtualbox-7.2'
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'virtualbox-7.2'
mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | rpm --import -^C
mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ wget -O- https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | sudo gpg --yes --output /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg --dearmor
--2025-11-06 19:22:05--  https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc
Resolving www.virtualbox.org (www.virtualbox.org)... 2.22.107.175, 2a02:26f0:fd00:d99::37b7, 2a02:26f0:fd00:dbf::37b7
Connecting to www.virtualbox.org (www.virtualbox.org)|2.22.107.175|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3157 (3.1K) [application/pgp-signature]
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

-                   100%[===================>]   3.08K  --.-KB/s    in 0s      

2025-11-06 19:22:06 (121 MB/s) - written to stdout [3157/3157]

Then I ran this again (not quite sure why I did, but seems to have advanced things):

mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ sudo apt-get update
Hit:1 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-security InRelease
Hit:2 https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu noble InRelease                 
Hit:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble InRelease                         
Hit:4 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-updates InRelease                 
Hit:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-backports InRelease               
Hit:6 https://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable InRelease               
Get:7 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian noble InRelease [4,442 B]
Ign:8 http://packages.linuxmint.com zara InRelease
Hit:9 http://packages.linuxmint.com zara Release
Get:10 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian noble/contrib amd64 Packages [2,029 B]
Fetched 6,471 B in 1s (9,843 B/s)    
Reading package lists... Done

Then:

mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-7.2.4
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package virtualbox-7.2.4
E: Couldn't find any package by glob 'virtualbox-7.2.4'
E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'virtualbox-7.2.4'

Try again, with “7.2” not “7.2.4”:

mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-7.2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libgsoap-2.8.132t64 libqt5help5 libqt5opengl5t64 libqt5sql5-sqlite
  libqt5sql5t64 libvncserver1
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libsdl1.2debian libxcb-cursor0
The following packages will be REMOVED
  virtualbox virtualbox-dkms virtualbox-qt
The following NEW packages will be installed
  libsdl-ttf2.0-0 libsdl1.2debian libxcb-cursor0 virtualbox-7.2
0 to upgrade, 4 to newly install, 3 to remove and 54 not to upgrade.
Need to get 114 MB of archives.
After this operation, 87.3 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/universe amd64 libxcb-cursor0 amd64 0.1.4-1build1 [10.7 kB]
Get:2 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/universe amd64 libsdl1.2debian amd64 1.2.68-2 [101 kB]
Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble/universe amd64 libsdl-ttf2.0-0 amd64 2.0.11-6 [15.1 kB]
Get:4 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian noble/contrib amd64 virtualbox-7.2 amd64 7.2.4-170995~Ubuntu~noble [114 MB]
Fetched 114 MB in 50s (2,289 kB/s)                                             
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 513108 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing virtualbox-qt (7.0.16-dfsg-2ubuntu1.1) ...
Removing virtualbox (7.0.16-dfsg-2ubuntu1.1) ...
Removing virtualbox-dkms (7.0.16-dfsg-2ubuntu1.1) ...
Module virtualbox-7.0.16 for kernel 6.14.0-33-generic (x86_64).
Before uninstall, this module version was ACTIVE on this kernel.

vboxdrv.ko.zst:
 - Uninstallation
   - Deleting from: /lib/modules/6.14.0-33-generic/updates/dkms/
 - Original module
   - No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
   - Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.

vboxnetadp.ko.zst:
 - Uninstallation
   - Deleting from: /lib/modules/6.14.0-33-generic/updates/dkms/
 - Original module
   - No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
   - Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.

vboxnetflt.ko.zst:
 - Uninstallation
   - Deleting from: /lib/modules/6.14.0-33-generic/updates/dkms/
 - Original module
   - No original module was found for this module on this kernel.
   - Use the dkms install command to reinstall any previous module version.
depmod....
Deleting module virtualbox-7.0.16 completely from the DKMS tree.
Selecting previously unselected package libxcb-cursor0:amd64.
(Reading database ... 512482 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libxcb-cursor0_0.1.4-1build1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libxcb-cursor0:amd64 (0.1.4-1build1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package virtualbox-7.2.
Preparing to unpack .../virtualbox-7.2_7.2.4-170995~Ubuntu~noble_amd64.deb ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/virtualbox-7.2_7.2.4-170995~Ubuntu~noble_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 new virtualbox-7.2 package pre-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Selecting previously unselected package libsdl1.2debian:amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../libsdl1.2debian_1.2.68-2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libsdl1.2debian:amd64 (1.2.68-2) ...
Selecting previously unselected package libsdl-ttf2.0-0:amd64.
Preparing to unpack .../libsdl-ttf2.0-0_2.0.11-6_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libsdl-ttf2.0-0:amd64 (2.0.11-6) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/virtualbox-7.2_7.2.4-170995~Ubuntu~noble_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
mike@M15:/media/mike/aaa$

At the end of that there was no VirtualBox application on my system. BASH suggested this command, which I did:

sudo apt install virtualbox-qt

… at the end of that I had VirtualBox. But it was the old 7.0 version.
What have I done wrong?

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