VirtualBox a Vmware alternative

Posted by Martin in Linux, Operating Systems, Windows  Tags: , , , , , , ,

10

Feb



You all know that you can run virtual operating systems using vmware. VirtualBox is a free open source alternative to vmware which currently runs on 32-bit versions of Windows and Linux and supports the following guest systems: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux 2.4 / 2.6, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Vista.

I would advise to begin by downloading the excellent user manual which should answer most questions about installing and configuring guest systems using Virtualbox. It takes some time to read through the 108 pages of the manual but it is well worth it to understand the functionality.

Just download the 10 megabyte file from the VirtualBox website or as a torrent and install the software. Installation is really easy in Windows (just a double-click) but a little bit more complicated in Linux. Check the user manual for a detailed instruction for Linux.

I do not want to explain a detailed instruction to setup a new guest system because the user manual explains everything in such great detail that it does not feel necessary at all. You basically create a new virtual machine and assign a name, ram and hard drive space to it and select a source for the installation of the guest system. The source can be from hard drive or cd for instance, just make sure you have the source at hand.


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Planeta FreeBSD » VirtualBox a Vmware alternative says:

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Paul Carey says:

VirtualBox is great piece of open source software and a testimony to the power of open source. It is certainly fast to run and is generally easy to get up and going in both windows and Linux environments. however its not without its problems (both linux and windows versions), I’ve had a fair few lockups, blue screens and random system restarts using it as well as managing to brick one USB drive completely, losing all the data, using its USB emulation feature. My advice is use but be careful and don’t rely on it to much.

YM2149 says:

virtualbox sux
its so terrible it cant emulate Windows Neptune, Longhorn or even Vista beta’s

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