Question: I'd like to run the new Unity interface from Ubuntu 10.10 inside of a VirtualBox VM (host is Ubuntu 10.04). Is that possible? Thanks!

Answer: 
So, to answer the title of this article:

"How to create a Ubuntu Netbook 10.10 Unity VM under VirtualBox"

You can't. The Unity interface can't run in a VirtualBox guest. You can, however, use the default gnome shell common to the regular Ubuntu distribution -- but that is not trying out UNR...
I installed VirtualBox and tried the steps below and it doesn't work. Testing shows that Unity uses OpenGL features that are not supported by the 3D driver for VirtualBox guests:

```
$ unity
OpenGL Warning: glXChooseFBConfigSGIX not implemented by Chromium
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

```

[Chromium](http://chromium.sourceforge.net/) is the library that Virtualbox uses for its 3D support, and apparently it lacks this feature...

---

It should be possible to run Unity in an Ubuntu guest inside VirtualBox provided that you enable 3D virtualization inside the virtual machine configuration and VirtualBox runs on a machine with OpenGL support.

I think the best way to do it is to install the desktop edition first, then install:

* the `virtualbox-ose-guest-x11` package (and probably the other virtualbox-ose-guest-\* packages too).
* the `ubuntu-netbook` package (which will make sure Unity and everything it needs gets installed)

After a reboot of the guest inside the virtual machine, you will be able to select the "netbook session" from the login screen (after selecting your user, but before entering your password).

This two-step process is needed because Unity requires 3D graphics and the drivers for the 3D virtualization are not installed by default.