why virtualbox

UPDATE: The list of VMWare OS version only help you set basic resource (CPU, Memory, etc), so you can choose anyone and modify them on your need

I don't know which OS version should be chosen from VMWare OS version list. There are some Debian series, latest is Debian 8.x, but I need 9, also there is no Kernel 4.x item on the list, so I install virtualbox, I find a Debian (64bit).

disk space

It's better to generate a 15Gib or more disk. I use a 10Gib disk and got "no more space" error during installing GNOME.

additional software

compile virtualbox additional software needs some build softwares, you can get them from build-essential package, and build kernel modules need kernel header files, you can get them from linux-headers-4.9.0-3-amd64, which is default kernel version.

sudo apt install build-essential linux-headers-4.9.0-3-amd64