Does a guest OS under Virtualbox need to install drivers for peripheral devices? I run a guest Ubuntu under Virtualbox in Mac OS X.

The host Mac OS X has been configured to print on a network printer by someone else. 

Now I try to configure the guest Ubuntu to print on the same network printer. I have provided the ip address and  PPD file (extracted from the driver) of the printer during setup , but when I try to print a test page, it doesn't work. 
Not sure what has been going wrong.

In general, when using a peripheral device on a guest OS, do I need to install its driver just as if the guest OS were a host OS?

Thanks.
The short answer here is "yes"

If it's a network printer, you should be able to access it over the network as if you were on a physical host.