Can linux and virtual box do this:
 

Is it possible to image my linux host OS, save it, then load that saved image into virtualbox?

Doing so would result in an exact duplicate that I could run as a guest.

Doing so appeals to me. Otherwise, I would have to re-configure the OS settings from memory once running in virtualbox.

Doing it this way would be very slick.

Is this possible? Or is it not that simple?

It would probably work - Linux is pretty resilient when it comes to hardware changes. However, it's probably overkill for what you want, and likely won't work as well as a fresh install without a lot of work. More likely, it'd be sufficient to just transfer the relevant config files. Have you considered just copying .* from your homedir, and maybe /etc (though that could cause issues with some software)?

Sorry, what is:

.*

I don't recall a folder / file labeled as such.

Regardless, do you think a fresh install into virtualbox would yield better results?

Thanks.

karamarisan means moving all the hidden files and folders (all files prefixed with a . are hidden) as that would move any personalised configurations and profiles over.

The vmware P2V convertor works great. VirtualBox can run the vmdk vmware image.

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

Hope that helps.

I do. What you described can work, but I don't think it's worth the effort if the only reason you have is saving your configs.

As XavierP said, the purpose of .* is to copy the hidden files and directories in your homedir, which is where applications store their configurations. Because it has a * in it, it's not a filename but a glob - a pattern against which other things are matched. In your shell (which I am assuming to be bash), a simple * will only match non-hidden files, so you need .* to get all the hidden ones.