When I tried to install VirtualBox on my laptop running Debian 13, I was surprised to find that the program wouldn't launch. I installed it on my desktop computer (which also runs Debian 13), and I had no problems.
Looking in the logs (as a reminder with the journalctl command), I discovered that it was because a library was missing, and that it did not give any apparent error message when launched.
/usr/lib/virtualbox/VirtualBox: error while loading shared libraries: libQt6StateMachine.so.6: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directoryTo solve this problem, simply install the package that will install the library.
Look carefully in the logs, it may not be this library that you are specifically missing.
In my case, I installed the libqt6statemachine6 package
sudo apt install libqt6statemachine6It may be possible that the library cannot be installed due to dependencies.
If this is the case, the package manager will inform you, and you will need to type the command sudo apt --fix-broken install to resolve the problem.
If this is the case, the package manager will inform you, and you will need to type the command sudo apt --fix-broken install to resolve the problem.
If the last library was missing, VirtualBox should now start. Otherwise, install the other missing library by checking the logs.
Sometimes a reboot is enough to solve the problem, because virtualization options in the kernel are sometimes enabled during installation, and you need to restart the computer for the changes to take effect.
