How to Install and Use Bluestacks on Ubuntu

Bluestacks is one of the most popular Android Emulators for PCs. It comes packed with many tools and is compatible with major android applications and games. Unfortunately, it is built for Windows and Mac users only, and if you want to run Bluestacks on a Linux operating system, you will have to make some tweaks.

This tutorial will show you how you can set up Bluestacks Emulator on your Ubuntu system.

NOTE: Since we will run Bluestacks on a virtual machine, ensure you have your Ubuntu installation done on bare metal.

Step 1 – Setting Up Virtual Box on Ubuntu

The first step is to set up a Windows virtual machine. For this, we will use Oracle’s VirtualBox since it is easy to install and use.

Open the terminal and update the system as:

The next step is to install the dependencies for the VirtualBox package. Enter the command:

Next, install VirtualBox using the .deb package. Open the terminal and enter the command:

Once you have the .deb package downloaded, use the dpkg command to install Virtualbox as:

Once Virtualbox is installed successfully, open Ubuntu search and open VirtualBox.

Step 2 – Downloading and Installing Windows

Once you have VirtualBox installed, the next step is to download an ISO version of Windows 10.

If you have one, feel free to skip to the installation process. However, if you do not have an ISO image, you can download one from the official Microsoft source using the command:

Once you have the ISO downloaded, open VirtualBox and select “New.” This will launch the VM creation dialog.

1. Enter the name of your OS and select the version.
2. Next, allocate your VM the desired memory size. Since we will run Bluestacks in the VM, ensure you have at least 4 GB of memory.
3. In the next step, create a virtual hard disk for your VM and select Dynamically allocated.
4. Choose the file location and size of your hard disk file.
5. After creating the VM, click on settings and navigate to the storage menu.
6. Click on Empty and select “Choose ISO file,” as shown in the screenshot below.
7. Choose the Windows 10 ISO you downloaded earlier.
8. Finally, click on power on to install Windows on the VM.

Step 3 – Installing Bluestacks

Once you have the Windows VM installed, we can proceed to install the Bluestacks emulator.

Launch your browser and navigate to the Bluestacks 5 download page as provided in the resource below:

https://www.bluestacks.com/download.htm

Select and download the installer version for your Windows system.

Launch the downloaded installer package and follow the installation instructions.

Once you have Bluestacks set up, click on the search menu and search for Bluestacks 5. Launch the icon to use Bluestacks.

Conclusion

This tutorial discussed how you could use Bluestacks on Ubuntu by using a Windows virtual machine.