VirtualBox uses its own drivers, but allocates memory for video and sound. You
can share a soundcard but only use one at a time. Also you may have to re-boot
your VM to get control of your sound in Linux from my experience.

When you install VirtualBox you need to have certain pre-requisites, but it is
easier to install them from Synaptic, the package manager, which will install
the dependencies. In comparison, VMWare requires VirtualBox is to add your user
name to Vboxusers Group in the Users and Groups section of the Administration
panel. Once this is done, Virtualbox is ready for use.

You can install any OS, but Windows is the usual one and it has some
peculiarities that make it difficult to use with Linux (a different file
structure, APIs and more). All in all it is amazing that VirtualBox can sort it
out at all. So do not give up easily. Expect problems.

In VirtualBox settings the sound card should be set for OSS. If your sound in
Linux does not work then shut off the VM and if worse comes to worse logout and
back in or even re-boot. I have not had to go the this extreme, but it should
re-set your sound settings. Not doing so would be an extreme situation, indeed.