if no ISO, then how to use VirtualBox?

[BobW]

There's apparently a move to do away with ISOs; so with a non-ISO distro, do I have to create an ISO for VB? Or can VB be made to use the files from a frugal install?

E.g.:
https://vanilla-dpup.github.io/
"9.0.x is the last Vanilla Dpup to feature traditional ISO images..."
so should I avoid 9.1 ?

What about the Save file, can I run Puppy using LICK, then take that tuned setup and its Save, and transfer it for occasional use in VB?

I've used Rufus in the past on Windows, and made bootable USB sticks by hand. But that's more of a burden than LICK, when distro hopping or kernel switching. And VB comes in handy if I want to do something quick without having to reboot.

Thanks.

P.S. Can somebody say 2-3 quick sentences about why some want to do away with ISO files? I'm thinking that the sentiment is not unanimous.

[Phoenix]

The new preferred method of 'packaging' the puppy should still be burnable. Just tell Rufus to use dd method instead. (Unzip first via 7z)

[dimkr]

Vanilla Dpup 9.1.x comes as raw disk images - there's no need to install from an ISO to a new virtual hard drive, because what you download is a virtual drive with Vanilla Dpup preinstalled.

For example, to boot using QEMU, you can qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -m 2048 -vga cirrus -drive format=raw,file=vanilladpup-9.1.13-ext4-2gb-uefi.img -bios /usr/share/qemu/OVMF.fd. If you use the BIOS image and tell VirtualBox it's a raw disk image (or convert it to qcow2, VDI, whatever), it should work just fine.