Detailed below are the procedures that I used to install VirtualBox 7.1.12 onto Linux Mint 22.1. The officlal VirtualBox website has all of these instructions on it and was used as a reference. This is just a cleaned-up version of those instructions and what worked best for me.
Because I want VirtualBox to automatically update with the rest of the system, I will need to tell the system's package manager where to get all of the files.
Open the command line Terminal. Enter the following command to download and register the authentication key.
wget -O- https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | sudo gpg --yes --output /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg --dearmor
You can now exit the terminal.
Open the Software Sources program. Go to the Additional Repositories section and select Add. Put the following line in.
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg] https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian noble contrib
Click on the Update The APT Cache button.
You can now close the Software Sources window.
Open the Synaptic Package Manager. Find the package "virtuialbox-7.1" and mark it for installation. Click on the Apply button to proceed with the installation.
Go the the VirtualBox Downloads page and download the Extension Pack. Once it is downloaded, navigate to the file and double-click on it. This should automatically bring up VirtualBox and ask if you want to install it. Click on the Install button. Scroll through the license and click on the I Agree button. After a few seconds the install should complete and you will be at the main VirtualBox screen.
In order to use all of the features of VirtualBox (e.g., USB devices), you will need to add your user to the VirtualBox group
Open the Users and Groups program. Select your user name and then click on the list to the right of the Groups label. A new window should appear. Look for the "vboxusers" entry and enable it. Click on the OK button to confirm the select and then reboot the system.
VirtualBox should now be installed and ready to go.