She downloaded the .vbox-extpack file. Double-clicked it. VirtualBox blinked, asked for her password, and within seconds, the job was done.

"Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack available."

She’d ignored it for months. "Why add proprietary bits to a beautiful open-source tool?" she’d grumble.

The failing server disk image? She mounted the USB 3.0 drive. The disk clone that would have taken two hours took twenty minutes.

For basic VMs, VirtualBox was perfect. But she had a problem. A USB device—a vintage drawing tablet she used for schematic sketches—refused to connect. Also, her Windows 11 VM felt sluggish, its window resizing with a jagged, pixelated stutter. And the "Remote Display" feature? Grayed out. Useless.

Then she tried the remote display. From her laptop on the couch, she connected via RDP to the headless VM. It was like sitting at The Tower itself.