Skip to content

Linux Installation Guide

Supported distributions

Due to the high number and variety of Linux distributions, it is impossible for us to test Genymotion Desktop on each and every one of them. For this reason, only the following distributions are officially supported:

  • Ubuntu 24.04LTS (Noble Numbat)
  • Debian 12 (Bookworm)
  • Fedora Workstation 40

Warning

  • Genymotion Desktop is only available for 64-bit Linux (x86_64, amd64).
  • Gnome, KDE and MATE desktop environments are fully supported. Other environments may not work correctly."

Hypervisor

Genymotion Desktop works as-is with an embedded QEMU hypervisor based on KVM which is installed by default on our supported distributions, there is no need to install any extra software.

Use VirtualBox instead of QEMU (strongly discouraged)

VirtualBox is not included in our installer and needs to be installed prior to Genymotion Desktop:

  1. Download VirtualBox 7.0.26 .deb package for Ubuntu 24.04

  2. Perform a global update and reboot:

    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo reboot

  3. Install the downloaded package:

    sudo apt install ./virtualbox-7.0_7.0.26-168464~Ubuntu~noble_amd64.deb

    Press Y and press ENTER to confirm. VirtualBox dependency packages are being downloaded and installed. It may take a while to complete.

    Secure Boot

    If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

    You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

  4. Add your user to the vboxusers group:

    sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER

  5. Reboot your PC.

To verify your installation, run the following commands in a terminal:

groups | grep vboxusers

If this command does not return anything, then your user account is not in the vboxusers group. To solve this, run sudo usermod -a -G vboxusers $USER, then log out and in again - or reboot your PC.

Next, verify that VirtualBox kernel modules are properly installed and working:

lsmod | grep -i vbox

If successful, it should return the following:

$ lsmod | grep -i vbox
vboxnetadp             28672  0
vboxnetflt             28672  0
vboxdrv               524288  2 vboxnetadp,vboxnetflt

If not, try to force VirtualBox kernel modules compilation:

sudo vboxconfig

And reboot your PC.

Please refer to VirtualBox wiki for detailed instructions.

Secure Boot

If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

Please refer to this article for detailed instructions.

Secure Boot

If Secure Boot is enabled on your host machine, VirtualBox installer will try to sign its kernel modules during installation and you will need to set a password to your Secure Boot. A full reboot of your system is mandatory to apply the change after installation.

You will then be prompted at startup by Secure Boot to input the password you set.

Genymotion Desktop Installation

  1. Open a terminal and move to your home Download folder1:

    cd ~/Download

  2. Give run permission to the Genymotion installer .run file:

    chmod +x genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run

  3. Run the installer. PATH is the install target path2:

    ./genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run -d PATH
Global installation (not recommended)

It is possible to install Genymotion globally with the sudo command:

sudo ./genymotion-X.Y.Z-linux_x64.run

This will install Genymotion in /opt/genymotion, however we do not recommend this as it may cause issues due to access permissions.

  1. It is assumed that downloaded files are in your home Download folder. If not, replace ~/Download with the appropriate path in the command lines. ↩

  2. If the installer is run without -d option, Genymotion will be installed in your current folder, in ./genymotion/. ↩

Back to top