Comments on: VirtualBox Virtual Machine Software: A Hands-On Review

By: rdnk

rdnk — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:29:52 +0000

I’m also testing Virtualbox for my virtualization needs after I found VMWare a bit resource hog. Virtualbox is a lot quicker in my Ubuntu host running Windows XP guest, and what I especially appreciate is that sound works flawlessly. I was not able to get glitch-free audio from WMWare.

Then again VMWare never crashed like Virtualbox does, sometimes even taking the whole host down. Also Virtualbox is using a lot of CPU time. Sometimes processor usage is 100% on the host for the core in which Virtualbox process is running, even though inside guest it’s not nowhere near maxed.

By: Moggen

Moggen — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 08:27:16 +0000

I run Virtual Box 2.1.4 on my 32 bit Vista Pro laptop. Performance is excellent, and it is really easy to work with. There is a few things I have noted:
Hibernating the laptop and powering it up again sometimes makes Virtual Box hang and use 100% of one CPU. I’m shuttning down my machines and exit Virtual Box before I do this just to be on the safe side.
I have read in forums and blogs that version 2.2.0 sometimes refuses to uninstall properly, possibly leaving windows corrupted. Thats why I run 2.1.4. I hope the next release addresses this.
Don’t even try to run Virtual PC at the same time… Instant blue screen on my system.

But overall I really like it and recommend it. And it is free!

By: mmj

mmj — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:41:55 +0000

VirtualBox is awesome. I used it to test the Windows 7 Beta, as well as to test several Linux distributions and setups.

Getting USB to work within the guest can be tricky. And forget about 3D graphics (but isn’t that the case with all VM software to date?). But otherwise it is great. SATA, ACPI, even hardware virtualization support.

By: rozner

rozner — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:14:24 +0000

I’ve been using VMWare Fusion for a while now on my MacBook Pro and it runs very well. I run WinXP on there and sometimes I forget it’s a VM. With VMWare tools installed I can even watch videos through the VM. I usually don’t as it’s not necessary but I was impressed with how well it works.

It also has a quick install option for XP where you just give the product key and it takes care of the rest, so none of the dialogue screens and multiple reboots. You can just leave it be for ~30 minutes and then it’s ready to go.

I have yet to try VirtualBox but I can’t imagine it being any better than Fusion, except for the price.

By: Tyssen

Tyssen — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:44:11 +0000

I’ve been using VirtualBox on my Vista machine for running Linux and Windows 7 VMs. I don’t actually dip into them too much so I’m not really that familiar with how good they are (certainly better than VirtualPC though).

I’ve just bought a MacBook and am using VM Fusion on there though as I like how I can make the guest OS take up the whole screen and using the Unity feature you can have access to apps inside the guest appear as if though they’re apps in OS X.

By: jphilapy

jphilapy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 16:55:36 +0000

I use virtualbox and is nice for testing. Just be careful using the virtualbox addon tools as they can screw with your graphics. I was working on a webpage and I kept seeing an invisble box flickering when I move the mouse around the browser and then it would crash. I resolved the problem by uninstalling the tools.

I tried to use vmware for awhile but always dredded the startup because it consumes alot of my computer resources. But virtualbox seems very quick, even faster than my web browser and I have no problem letting it hang open for awhile, though I just shut it down.

Jeff

By: bulletproofpoet

bulletproofpoet — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:15:39 +0000

@Craig Buckler
True, it could be risky to run multiple VMs from a single base image, and I agree that a complete clone would be the safest option. It was just a thought that occurred to me, and one that I’ll try to test when time permits.

Good review, by the way.

Cheers!

By: Craig Buckler

Craig Buckler — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:02:35 +0000

@bulletproofpoet
It’s an interesting thought, but would that work? Has anyone tried it? Cloning is still likely to be the safest and easiest option – after all we’re only talking about a couple of GB per virtual disk for XP.

By: bulletproofpoet

bulletproofpoet — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:30:39 +0000

Unusually, VirtualBox allows you to run more than one virtual machine from the same disk image. You could therefore experiment with different hardware configurations, but I cannot think of any other practical use.

I may be wrong (only started playing with Virtual Box recently myself), but couldn't you use this to create one baseline Windows disk image, and then set up two Virtual Machines (VMs) to use it? As long as you use snapshots for each VM and don't roll them back into the baseline disk image, you could install different software into each machine (say leave one with IE6 and install IE7 in the other). I think the snapshots store incremental changes, so this method should use far less disk space than having a complete Windows setup for each VM. As I said, I'm new to Virtual Box myself and haven't tried this yet (so it's pure speculation), but that would/could be a real benefit to having multiple VMs sharing a single disk image.

By: SoreGums

SoreGums — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 09:04:51 +0000

I recently switch from VMWare Server to VirtualBox about a month ago. It is far simpler and quicker to run compared to VMWare Server, its browser based interface is clunky. I thought about buying VMWare workstation, then found VirtualBox.

Running on Vista x64 I use Gentoo(amd64) for running all my code (ruby/merb/sinatra/rails, couchdb, mysql, nginx, git), with samba linking desktop to linux for editing via E text editor. It’s a great combo as I could never leave windows desktop for full linux desktop.