Sun xVM VirtualBox: free x86 virtualiztion

If you want to look at running Window applications without windows look at WINE, or possibly Wine+Thinstall see here: http://www.brianmadden.com/blog/BrianMadden/Thinstall--Wine--Windows-apps-without-Windows

I have been using VBox for a few months now. The new 1.6.0 version is far improved over the previous adding in USB 2.0 support and Guest-Host file sharing. There are no commercial dollars backing the development of this utility. That considered, this is one amazing piece of open source software. I have never had a lockup or crash. Although the first time I launched to install XP it didn't work. Since then it has come up every time.

I am running XP on my MBA and am fairly close to eliminating Bootcamp. Yes, the VM is slow, but I like having both file systems side-by-side. Once the network-bridging is in place, I think I will be all set.

Oh, and the SW is only about 30MB, not bad! Although I am not sure how that compares to VMWare or Parallels.

Tried it a week or so ago. So far it runs great with the various Linux appliances and DamnSmallLinux I tried, but I have not tried it with actual Windows yet.

I've been playing with VirtualBox on and off since before Sun acquired it. It's a decent start, but it's very buggy and the interface is horrible. I've had it lock up many times and twice lock up my entire Mac Pro, forcing a reboot.

Given that if you watch the sales and rebates, you can pick up either VMWare Fusion or Parallels Desktop for about US$40, it just doesn't seem worth it to mess around with VB if you're actually serious about doing any real work.

It's importantly to not use bogus words like, oh, 'importantly', as in "most importantly".

Also see the community forum for VirtualBox on Mac OS X Hosts:
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=8

The new Sun website on VirtualBox is terrible. It does not explain the difference between the non-free Binary version and the really free Open Source Version.

I suspect the differences are the same as in the past. The free Open Source version does not have USB support and some other features; whereas, the binary version does have USB support and some other minor features.

The Binary version is free for home, non-commercial use. So if you are using Sun VirtualBox at home, you probably want to use the Binary version.

If you want to use the Binary version for commercial use, you will need to pay for it. The web site does not say how much Sun is now charging for a commercial use license.

On the other hand, I believe you can use the Open Source version free of charge for commercial use. But I suspect like, in the past, it does not have USB support and some other minor features are missing.

Note -- The free Open Source version is just source code. You will need to install the free Apple XCode development tools to compile it. It is not hard.

I wouldn't know what it's like for "real work", or for Windows (which I don't do), but the idea of paying for a commercial utility so I could set up Ubuntu Linux in a VM for occasional dabbling seemed kind of nuts, so I was happy to discover VirtualBox. And even more happy to find it quite pleasant and easy to use, for my purposes anyway. Good job!

I have been waiting to have a VM for OSX. Mac-on-Mac doesn't work so well. Hopefully this will do the job.

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I downloaded this the other day. You'll go mad trying to open the .dmg.cpgz file. It's not. It's just a DMG file that is named a .cpgz file. All you have to do is rename it to .dmg (don't try and extract it or unzip it). It'll then open as a normal dmg.