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VirtualBox 1.6 is a major update with 2000 improvements

ubuntu-unleashed.com — Among the highlights: * The new Sun livery * Solaris and Mac versions no longer in beta * Guest Additions for Solaris * Seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests * SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM (first product in the industry to do SATA!) * PAE support for guests (memory model required by some server OSes)...

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  • yetAnotherCroc, on 05/04/2008, -4/+8This is really nice. Setting up an XP VM for some apps right now.
    • nailer, on 05/04/2008, -1/+6To download without the Sun download manager *****, ignore the orange download button and click the filename.
    • kymike, on 05/05/2008, -0/+6Indeed. I was very disapointed with VMWare (the free version), and then tried VirtualBox. Wow - my virtual XP system boots up much quicker than my "real" XP system on the same laptop! (Bear in mind that the "real" one has been gathering bloat for about three years.)
      • antdude, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2You should use Workstation. I use v5.5.6 in Linux host and it's great. I am sure v6 is even better.
        • yetAnotherCroc, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1I like what I see as far as the new unity mode in VMWare 6. But alas I be a poor student and cannot afford such fancy software. Well I could but the added usefullness is not enough to warrant the steep rise in cost.
    • kenok, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1This is still free yeah?

      Previously there's VirtualBox OSE for download.
      • yetAnotherCroc, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1there still is. It's basically the same thing only you dont get the guest additions (which in my opinion make a huge difference.)
  • nanostream, on 05/04/2008, -1/+59VirtualBox is really handy; it lets you boot an existing WinXP install from your physical HD partition!
    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=769883
    • TechCF, on 05/04/2008, -2/+12Hmm, sounds great for Boot Camp!
    • diggrim, on 05/04/2008, -1/+4yeah, but XP doesn't tend to like reloading drivers each time you boot...I'm scared to try
      • nanostream, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5I think I've done all the dirty work putting the tutorial together... I might have overused my product key =]
        But I don't believe there is anything left to worry about - I've figured out a way to activate only once when booting from Virtualbox. Other than that XP doesn't mind.. From my experience everything should be fine. If you do decide to try it, let me know how it goes!
        • dacheetah, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1I am so glad I have access to a legal VLK for XP. Not having to worry about activation, and not using a pirate key is great. Just means I have to do my experiments at work, or at least using work owned hardware.
      • DarkDx, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2That's what you set different hardware profiles (go to computer propierties: win + "pause/inter" and look around, you will find that option).
      • DestroyFascism, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Thinks Torrent and XP lite V5 (reged)
  • Planets, on 05/04/2008, -3/+39Does this run on Windows as well?
    • morphado, on 05/04/2008, -1/+34yes, of course
    • SirDaShadow, on 05/04/2008, -2/+20I don't blame Planets for asking. Sun bought Virtualbox and having its name on confused the heck out of me as well and I've been using it for years. They need to do something about the name...
      • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -2/+2No, the name is just fine. We need to do something about the users too lazy to RTFA.
    • onefix, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5One of the biggest advantages of this virtual machine is seamless windowing of Windows guests (think like parallels on the Mac only for Linux).
    • MattBD, on 05/04/2008, -0/+7Yes. I often run it on my Windows laptop as its more powerful than my Kubuntu one. It's great for trying out new Linux distros.
      • Planets, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3This will definitely be useful for trying out new alphas...
  • frouse, on 05/04/2008, -0/+18Seamless windows for linux guests! Excellent
    • scilec, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3That's the first thing that caught my eye too. Several months ago, I wanted to have a linux guest running on my windows laptop that had seamless integration similar to VMware for Mac's "unity" mode. Since earlier versions of Virtualbox didn't provide that (and I don't know if this one does for a Windows host), I ended up installing "andlinux", which is built on top of "colinux". In addition to automatically starting up or shutting down the guest when you boot or shut down your host, the seamless integration is wonderful and the setup process automatically configures shared access between your host and your guest. The down sides are that you can't chose which guest you want (only Ubuntu with KDE or XFCE) and it can be a little tricky to get the networking to work. Still, I couldn't live without it. While I haven't read whether the new version of VirtualBox for Windows supports seamless integration for a Linux guest, that would be great if it did.
      • Buu700, on 05/04/2008, -1/+4andLinux is supposedly much better than a vm if you're n Windows: http://www.andlinux.org/

        (I haven't used andLinux, but I'm just saying that the xfce version seems more practical, as it consumes less resources and is GTK.)


        EDIT: Meant to reply to the above post, but it seems that the post I accidentally replied to beat me to it
    • pinchduck, on 05/04/2008, -1/+5Seamless Windows applications from Sun. The return of WABI! Ok, not really, but the effect for the end users is the same.
    • mrtrevin, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3I run Windows as a guest os on Ubuntu at work, VirtualBox seamless mode is awesome! Certain to catch a few eyes too when people notice you have both task bars.
  • jamesatdigg, on 05/04/2008, -15/+10this is lame give direct link
  • joeanon, on 05/04/2008, -25/+1Great, more features to test malware with... yippee I'm so excited. What would the world be without more under performing virtualization technology.
  • jordn, on 05/04/2008, -0/+15link to changelog:

    http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
  • srg13, on 05/04/2008, -0/+31Woah, I didn't know Sun bought VirtualBox... It's great software though, and I hope they keep it GPL
    • swordedge, on 05/04/2008, -0/+16Sun bought Innotek, the German company that managed the open source virtual box project.
      • specialK16, on 05/04/2008, -0/+14"SATA support for up to 32 hard disks per VM (first product in the industry to do SATA!)"

        And as you can see, it's already proving to be a great deal.
    • int19h, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2The must keep it GPL. If not, I'll fork it myself. ;)
  • neko, on 05/04/2008, -1/+2Interesting, but what makes "Seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests" special? Couldn't this be done already over X11? I suppose if virtualbox took care of the forwarding, that would make things a little easier...
    • nailer, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1You're completely right - but maybe the virtualbox guest simply uses X on the guest to do the seamlessness (particularly on Windows or Mac hosts, which don't include an X server by default).
  • picpak, on 05/04/2008, -21/+3Sun Download Manager? What the hell? Why can't I just download the file?
    • picpak, on 05/04/2008, -1/+13Digg me down, I didn't see I could just click the file name (virtualbox_1.6.0-30421_Ubuntu_hardy_i386.deb) to get the file.
  • Stonekeeper, on 05/04/2008, -1/+16VB is the best desktop virtulisation software around.
    • Eldoo77, on 05/04/2008, -1/+15Am I the only one that read VB and instantly thought Visual Basic?
      • Stonekeeper, on 05/04/2008, -2/+6Because Visual Basic is a desktop vistualisation software?
        • DarkDx, on 05/05/2008, -1/+3No, it's a virtulisation software, DU.H
        • Stonekeeper, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3Damnit, the spelling police caught me again. Guilty as charged your honour.
      • werries, on 05/05/2008, -0/+4no, you're not. i did too. =/ God i hate that programming language.
        and to Stonekeeper, VB was the first word, context not read yet, so its an easy mistake.
        • Stonekeeper, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1yeah, i do that to scare people. Looks like it worked :)
      • Smegzor, on 05/05/2008, -0/+5I did too until I read 'is the best' then I knew it couldn't be that VB :)
    • Myztry, on 05/05/2008, -1/+1VB is also a beer in Australia. It the article was about beer, I might have assumed that... But since it's about virtualisation... I didn't..
      • yetAnotherCroc, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Well in a sense beer could be a form of virtualizing. You basically run your life temporarilly in an alternate reality inside of the regular reality. Wears down the hardware though and it takes a little while to recover full functionality after shutting down the VM. Depending of course on how much of your consiousnes you assigned to the VM (Beer)
  • OMNOMNOM, on 05/04/2008, -12/+2Wait..... 2000 improvements? Or improvements with Windows 2000?
    • Gutterpunk, on 05/04/2008, -0/+7No, 2000 improvements. They counted them. It's not 2000 "bug fix", but 2000 improvements!
  • Kingoftherings, on 05/04/2008, -0/+35Still waiting on full 3D support :(
    • specialK16, on 05/04/2008, -0/+29Whoever gets full 3d support first, VMWare or VBox or any other product, gets my vote!
    • MasteRR, on 05/04/2008, -0/+7Don't hold your breath. No VM can do that correctly yet. So far all we have is a Wine layer that makes it partially work.
      • Kamill85, on 05/04/2008, -5/+3I think Parallels for mac does it perfectly... Then again, I don't have a mac :p
        • arcticblue, on 05/05/2008, -0/+5It's not perfect. I think it only works with DX8 and *some* DX9 apps. None of the games I have work under it.
          • MacParrot, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2CrossOver Mac (which uses WINE as well) does a pretty decent job for some stuff. I've been trying out Orange Box on an iMac and it looks pretty good. I would suggest saving early and often as screen freezes are not unheard of and games that use CDs as an anti-piracy measure do not work at all (yet). Still has some work to go I think, but the ability to run some Windows software without Windows is worth supporting.
        • Firehed, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3It's okay at best for both Parallels and VMWare. It's not exactly a simple feat to translate DirectX instructions to OpenGL on the fly, send those from the virtual system to the physical hardware, and then return and re-transform as necessary the results back inside the virtual environment. I should think that OpenGL-based software in the guest environment plays fairly nicely, though I haven't tested.
          • specialK16, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3So it's Direct3D the problem huh? Guess we all know who to blame now.
      • Myztry, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3They just need to use the Video drivers as a capture point for the 3d acceleration. All API's (including DirectX and OpenGL) break down to driver function calls. More the issue would be translating the video primitives back up into the Host OS's rendering API.
        Even Linux OpenGL will get redirected through other renderers such as Compiz. Hitting the hardware is the very last step...
    • misterjangles, on 05/04/2008, -0/+4I'm not a hardware expert but i had guessed the problem is that 3D graphics rely on the video card hardware acceleration. So video card makers will need to provide virtualization support before we will get good performance on a virtual machine. Does anybody know if this is true..?
      • lacronicus, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2One of the main features of DX10 was video card virtualization, so it's very possible as long as you've got a dx10 capable system (which means Vista as well).
  • mooninite, on 05/04/2008, -16/+11Why are we linking to an Ubuntu page? This will run on *any* Linux distro.
    • kaiwai, on 05/04/2008, -7/+14because unfortunately there is a generation of Linux users who think that Linux equals Ubuntu.
      • Smegzor, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Linux != Ubuntu? :O NO WAI!
      • Stonekeeper, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1I don't think that's a bad thing. Linux is just an enabler. You can't take everything that's for ubuntu and make it work on Gentoo. Some things yes, others not. The quicker people realise that it's "powered by Linux" the better and less confusing for everyone.
    • SteveMax, on 05/04/2008, -1/+13Wait, you mean Linux isn't the same as Ubuntu?!?!?!?!!1/?11oneslasheleven?
    • MattBD, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2It'll run on Windows or Mac as well. IMHO it's the best way for someone to try Linux.
    • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2"this will run on *any* Linux distro..." well it'll also run on a bunch of non-linux OS's too. Does that mean that people are only allowed to submit a story if it's on an OS neutral site?
    • MacParrot, on 05/05/2008, -1/+1People relax. Eventually there will be a Linux distro that is just as easy or easier than Win/Mac and THAT will be the distro that most people will want and will pay for. The free as in beer folks can gnash their teeth all they want, but until Linux can unify under one or two easy to use/install/maintain distros, it will still remain a geek paradice with little to no commercial software support.
      This is same argument that Mac people have been fighting for years about game support. Higher market-share equals more third-party support.
    • newwatch51, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1orly?
  • Duggan360, on 05/04/2008, -5/+65Im just looking at stuff that isn't about Barack Obama
    • Gutterpunk, on 05/04/2008, -12/+4Well it does claim 2000 improvements. You just wait and see, Barack supporters' will come and claim it's his fault.
      /Only because Ron Paul supporters are all dead though
      //Canadian. I am allowed to laugh at every one of your parties in the same post.
      • desuexmachina, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5Because if we focussed on our political parties we'd crawl up in our igloos and cry ourselves to sleep.
      • charlestoN1, on 05/05/2008, -2/+1ur dumb
    • solid12345, on 05/05/2008, -0/+4Barack knoooows what its like to run an x86 machine without virtualization in America!
  • bigfloppydonkey, on 05/04/2008, -0/+10Been using this since 1.3
    I like it a lot! It is a very nice product. The only thing that keeps me from using it instead of VMWare or Parallels (this is OS X) is the bridged network support.
    • bigfloppydonkey, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3Downloaded the new version for OS X and it still doesn't have bridged networking.
      Does anyone know why this is so hard to implement? Not having this feature alone kills it for me. I would replace VMWare in a second, if it wasn't for this.
      • misterjangles, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1I am pretty sure you can do it but you have to use the command line to configure network interfaces. I saw a how-to but after seeing how much effort it was, i decided to stick with VMware for now.
    • danielsamuels, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I installed Fedora and Vista both as virtual machines under Leopard, Fedora could access the internet, Vista couldn't. It's strange, but overall it works very well.
      • Smegzor, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2I found that too. Every other guest OS can do networking but not Vista. I have to make ISO's to get stuff copied into Vista.
        I could patch it, but I only run Vista to test software for compatibility. Beyond that I have no use for it.
  • jbenson2, on 05/04/2008, -11/+22Version 1.6 had 2,000 improvements?
    Version 1.5 must have sucked really bad.
    • onefix, on 05/04/2008, -0/+8I don't know if you are joking or not, but 1.5.6 (the last version of 1.5) was really the last version released by Innotek before the Sun merger. Ok, it was released a week after the merger was announced, but 1.6 is the first release that Sun would have had a big hand in. So, I would figure that a majority of those improvements are on Solaris which probably did suck.
    • srg13, on 05/05/2008, -0/+4It is possible to improve good things to make them better, you know...
    • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1"improvements" not "fixes"
      There's always room for improvement, and when you consider the smallest update, there's a lot of them.
  • Tyrax, on 05/04/2008, -4/+7Can it run OSX yet?
    • jasutton, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5I haven't been able to. I've tried several (patched) copies of Tiger and Leopard and I can't get any of them to even get into the installer.
    • DigitalJester, on 05/04/2008, -1/+1It has PAE support now, although it's experimental. So I don't see why not.
      • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2Right, because PAE has nothing to do with OSX.
      • Firehed, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Which is great if you want to run a VM in a reasonably secure environment... or is that the thing with 4GB of RAM? I've forgotten a lot of the stupid acronyms. In any case, the ones OS X needs are EFI with, I believe, TCP as well, the latter of which being what causes most of the problems on an unpatched version of the OS.
      • Stonekeeper, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1PAE allows 32bit addressing per thread (from what i understand), which means that you can actually use > 3.4G RAM at any one time (just not on the same thread).
    • onefix, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5Yes, but you need to have SSE3 and an Intel VT-x capable processor.
      • mrraven200, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1What kind of speed would OS X run under virtualbox under a core2duo t5600 1.83 ghz 2 gig ram laptop? I tried vmware sever running OS X under Xp and wasn't too impressed.
    • Pfkninenines, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Tried a few times with 1.5.6, and I couldn't get past the first apple logo. Hope that changes with this version =D
  • TheLoneWolf071, on 05/04/2008, -1/+63D Support is less a problem of software and more a problem of hardware.
    • diggrim, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5I think it's a problem of software/hardware interfaces...3D requires high speed direct access, aka no multi-user environments
    • lacronicus, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1One of the major features of DX10 was virtualization support for video cards, so that's not a problem anymore. Of course, most people don't have that yet, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.
  • samdu, on 05/04/2008, -4/+1VMWare and Parallels have had SATA support for a long while now. Still, this looks cool.
    • fjc8, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2VMware & MS Hyper-V have virtual SCSI support. All solutons have virtual IDE support (4 drives). But only VirtualBox has virtual SATA support.

      The underlying block device usually doesn't make a difference.
      • Firehed, on 05/05/2008, -1/+1And the virtual interface to the hard drive really shouldn't matter either. It's not as if the guest OS cares how a fake hard drive is attached, and it certainly won't see a performance difference.
  • NerveBand, on 05/04/2008, -7/+7Wait a second. Isn't it a violation of Mac OS X's eula to run mac under VirtualBox? Maybe I'm reading this wrong?
    • Sinistral, on 05/04/2008, -0/+13I saw that too, but if you look at the wording, it's Mac OS X _hosting_, which means that the real OS is Mac OS, and you're using something else as the guest (aka virtualized) OS.
    • warringgael, on 05/04/2008, -2/+7No i think you're right. Im pretty sure thats in their EULA. Ive been thats basically the reason why hackintosh and OSx86 violates their EULA cuz its not on apple hardware
      • ssavoy, on 05/04/2008, -5/+3I smell a monopoly.
        • stalefries, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3It's not a monopoly, because they don't have a vast majority of the market.
        • 1timeuser, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3They control what hardware people can operate their software on and only they can sell it. It may not technically be a monopoly, but it is douchebaggery.
    • misterjangles, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5If you go to the parallels beta forums, the latest version of parallels server runs OSX virtually - but the host has to be running Leopard Server version on Apple hardware. The limitation is only due to the Apple EULA, the parallels developers on the forum have specifically said that there is no technical limitation, rather it is just the Apple license.
      • RyeBrye, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1I wonder why Parallels feels they have to go out of their way to enforce Apple's EULA. Why can't they just have a similar EULA and if someone were to *shock* host an OSX on non-apple hardware that wasn't running in OSX server - would be doing so to their own peril (and in violation of the Parallels EULA)
        • MacParrot, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2The Parallels guys get a lot of support from Apple and their program is very popular amongst OS X folks. Why bite the hand that feeds?
    • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -2/+3Most people running something like this at home couldn't give two ***** about any EULA.
    • Firehed, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3It would be, but you misread things. The host OS can be OS X, not the guest - which is to say that I can install VirtualBox on my MBP, but I couldn't use VirtualBox on my long-ignored Windows machine to run OS X (well, not the retail version anyways... the hacked x86 ones can probably be made to work with some tweaks, but you're well past caring about the EULA at that point).
  • ShyGuy91284, on 05/04/2008, -0/+6Do they have optomized drivers for WIndows Guests? That's always been my biggest gripe with Linux VM's. Without the optomized display and mouse drivers (which SuSE would let you lease for an arm and a leg as I recall), using Windows is a rather skippy experience....
    • onefix, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2Yes they do (similar to VMWare Tools. It comes with the free commercial edition...not sure about the community edition).
      • agentlame, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1While it's not included in the OSE version, when you click "Install guest add-ons" it offers to download them for you.
      • Macskeeball, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1edit: oops, wrong place.
    • Macskeeball, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2Just for future reference, it's spelled "optimized."
  • Kennerk, on 05/04/2008, -3/+2how can i change a partition so i can have both ubuntu and windows?
    • warringgael, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3Gparted partition manager is the defualt app for that.
      • Kennerk, on 05/04/2008, -1/+1alright, but will i keep everything on the other side of the partition?
        • theaceoffire, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3Gparted lets you resize the partition, so it will move all your data into the space you have left after resizing it.
          You should not lose any data unless you delete a partition or format it.
          • antdude, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Or lose power, hardware goes wacky, etc. ;) Backup first!!
    • Zalyster, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1If you have Vista, you can resize your Vista partition. Install Ubuntu(or whatever) to the other partition. You can use Grub or Vista's bootloader(add Ubuntu with a prog called EasyBCD). It's really easy, actually.
    • DestroyFascism, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Or just use Vbox and make a fake drive. Anywhere, even a flash card, usb, etc....
  • PolarZoe, on 05/04/2008, -1/+6Can it also run 64-bit guests on 32-bit host with 64-bit hardware?
    • Kennerk, on 05/04/2008, -0/+8*error*
    • kleverness, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3I think that a 32bit SO cannot run 64bit applications even with 64bit hardware, so I think it's not possible, but I'm no expert.
    • ifthenelse, on 05/04/2008, -0/+4I don't think there is anything that is going to perform very well in that situation because it would have to emulate a 64-bit processor. If you have a 64-bit processor then run a 64-bit host.

      With that said, VirtualBox can't run 64-bit guests at all no matter what host you are running. It also can't do multiple CPU's in the guest. I'll be sticking with VMware for now.
    • shifty2, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I know for a fact that VMWare Workstation 6 will do that. I haven't tried it with the Virtual Box. I'm installing it now.
      Right now, I'm running 32bit Ubuntu w/ Windows Server 2003 R2 64bit as the guest running 64bit applications.
      I do have a Core2 w/ VT enabled. It works like a charm.
  • ryryindo, on 05/04/2008, -0/+7c'mon, read the article aready...
    "Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp (experimental OSE builds), Windows, and Solaris/OpenSolaris.
    Supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris."
  • neil1492, on 05/04/2008, -11/+7I can't decide if I should digg it or bury it. I have not used a Windows App in about 2 years now.
    • lieven, on 05/04/2008, -0/+11It's also useful for running other operating systems
    • tnoy, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3What does windows have to do with it? Oh, wait, you just dont know anything about what virtualization really is. Nevermind.
  • warringgael, on 05/04/2008, -0/+7How does it compare to Wine for the purposes of running windows only apps? The new Wine looks pretty good and i dont have any experience with Virtualbox. Can i run i386 only software on an x64 OS with this?
    • theaceoffire, on 05/04/2008, -0/+5It will run all 2d applications.
      3d and programs that require access to your video card will probably not work (Since it emulates hardware).
      So if it works in Wine, it can use your video card.
    • scamper22, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I do occassionaly have to use windows software. So far, I have had no luck with wine. maybe it's just the applications i've tried, but they either run way too slow, or just plain don't work. i've stopped trying.

      I use virtualbox now and it just works. I run hardy 64-bit and use virtualbox to run windows xp (32bit) for things like my tax program...
      works brilliantly. Right now, my usage is pretty sparse. i mean I'm rarely using both ubuntu and windows xp at the same time. I only use wndows for some speciality apps (tax, cellphone software...). With 512 MB ram, it is slow switching between the main OS and the virtual XP. However, if I'm only use one at a time, it is quite fast. I suspect if i got some more ram, I could easily run the both quite comfortably.

      • srg13, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1What applications have you tried?
        • scamper22, on 05/05/2008, -0/+0trillian, samsung mobile software, ultravnc, quicktax

          Since I got vbox up and running, I don't take the time to try and make them work :)
      • Zalyster, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Get some more RAM dude. Just 1gb will really speed up your system.
        • scamper22, on 05/05/2008, -0/+0I accept donations :P
          kekek... I'm saving up for a new laptop :P
    • EclipseAgent, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1I use wine for as many windows app's as I can.. However it does not do MMC's therefore I need a Virtual XP Guest :(
    • diggrim, on 05/04/2008, -0/+4wine doesn't require you to own a copy of the guest operating system
      • warringgael, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1I might give VB a try. I think i have a few copies of XP laying around. Then i could delete my vista partition, which I hardly ever use.
  • epiffffany, on 05/04/2008, -10/+12,000 improvements? Have to ding the poster for pulling that number out of his/her ass.
    • misterjangles, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3they probably just counted the number of issues that were closed in their tracker. If you count every little glitch, it's pretty easy to have 2,000 fixes in a release. Publishing that number is definitely just for marketing hype.
  • lateralus, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2How does this fare against VMware esx server? Or is esx a completely different class of product.
    • EclipseAgent, on 05/04/2008, -0/+6ESX is in a different class. This is a replacement for VMWare Workstation and not the enterprise level software like VMWare ESX
      • OkydOky, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Is there an Open Source Competitor to ESX?
  • Phoros, on 05/04/2008, -1/+9Hey, Looks like 3d support is well under way!

    http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/475
  • PFS1, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3I actually just happened to install this yesterday. Works great, but (and I am sorry to use digg as tech support but thought it might be good in case anyone else here is having the same issue) when I have no idea where to get the virtual USB driver for my guest XP install. Virtualbox can see my USB devices and tries to hand them to XP, but XP won't think it has working USB ports until I can find that driver. Does this happen to everyone that installs this version? Or did I miss something?
    • zetsurin, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3I'm not sure if this is your problem, but it's quite common for VirtualBox to see the USB devices but not able to control them due to the way usbfs is set up. It's essentially a permissions problem. You can find some fairly lengthy guides on the internet or you can just run the app as root (less desirable of course, but it's always going to work). This may/may not be your problem though.
  • Robcataus, on 05/04/2008, -1/+2I am running it on a mac (leopard) and when I click on the .dmg file, it gives me an error message "no mountable file systems." Any help?
    • frouse, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2Try redownloading it or use a different browser to do it. You can also use the Sun Download Manager to do it. For some reason the Virtualbox dmg files can be a bit wonky.
    • jonahan52, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Figured it out for some reason when downloaded with safari it adds a .bz2 extension .. just remove that and all is well.
  • EclipseAgent, on 05/04/2008, -0/+4I can't decide if I want to install Virtual Box or keep my VMWare Workstation. Has anyone compared the guest speeds (Windows) on the 2 different platforms?

    I need windows for silly MMC's. I may just start throwing my VM in an ESX Cluster and just RDP to it..
    • onefix, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2I can say that I used to use VMWare Workstation, and while I haven't actually run benchmarks, VirtualBox just feels faster. The USB support is good, and the ability to integrate guest OS windows with the host OS (like parallels) kind of sealed the deal for me. If you're still interested in speed, read this ( http://preview.tinyurl.com/2tl3sc ). Which explains how the virtualization code in VirtualBox is faster than VT-x (which is why you should leave it of if you can). I have also verified in my own real world tests that leaving VT-x off in VirtualBox is faster.
    • RyeBrye, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2VMWare wont let anyone post benchmarks. It's in the EULA.
      (Draw your own conclusions about a company that doesn't want its performance objectively analyzed.)
    • antdude, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1Try both. I still like VMware Workstation more. VirtualBox will get better. Maybe it will be better than VMware to me eventually. :)
  • DreadPirate, on 05/04/2008, -1/+3when will there be a Ubuntu package for this? I have Virtualbox 1.5.6 installed using the package manager, and I would rather not go outside that just to upgrade.
    • kRYPT, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I just upgraded from 1.5.6 by downloading a new package from their website, but I had the "full version" installed, not the OSE.
      Ubuntu tends to be on the conservative side, they will probably not pick up 1.6 until the next release (8.10).
  • kolanos, on 05/04/2008, -0/+4Fixed USB 2.0? Hallelujah!
  • MattBD, on 05/04/2008, -0/+2I've never been able to get FreeBSD to work in VirtualBox, the installer just crashes. Ditto for PC-BSD and Gentoo Linux, even now there's a dedicated Gentoo option. But it runs most Linux distros fine, and I've also been able to get it working fine with BeleniX, ReactOS and Syllable. Never tried Windows on it though.
    • clickwir, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1We have one machine at work, Vista host and it's running 6 VM's. Ubuntu Hardy, FreeBSD, Gentoo, OSX, Windows 3.1 (cause we can) and Mandriva. Works fine.
    • yetAnotherCroc, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Windows works fine. Running it fullscreen on one of my desktops
    • newwatch51, on 05/06/2008, -0/+1Does Minix too.
  • antych, on 05/04/2008, -0/+3I started using it few days ago and I like it better than vmware, it's so light and simple
  • lopla, on 05/04/2008, -1/+1Can any geeks help me out? A few things:

    1.) I can't egt audio working, tried a variation of the settings, tried installing audio for my board in windows.. nothing. I have a gigabyte p35-ds3r
    2.) anyone know how to make it so I can cube to a 2nd desktop running full screen vb? I couldn't get it to run 1920x1200 on the 2nd desktop and even if I did I am not sure how I would flip back to my linux dtop..
    • mrBitch, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1If you use OS X as your host OS (install OSX86), then you will be able to :
      1.) get audio working, and
      2.) be able to use SPACES feature of OS X to run your VM 2nd desktop in a full screen.
  • rnstech, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Drats. With VMware workstation 6, I haven't had a failed install yet (12 OS's, 21 machines). My first attempt installing Ubuntu 8.04 server, and on reboot it fails with CPU doesn't support some required feature. This is on a dual Opteron 280 system with 8GB RAM, using the AMD64 MSI. Not a good first impression (which, by the way, is similar to my experience every time I've attempted to use virtualbox).
    • mrBitch, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2see pridkett's comment a few posts down :
      " For the folks who are having issues with virtual box booting Ubuntu server or other operating systems where you get a message saying that the CPU doesn't support some feature, it's because the kernel of the OS is assuming the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) are present without checking for them first. Prior to version 1.6 VirtualBox did not support PAE, but now it's an "experimental" feature. Go to the settings of your VM, select General->Advanced and check "Enable PAE/NX". That should do the trick. "
  • wpyh, on 05/04/2008, -0/+1Sadly GCC 4 is still not supported.
  • YodaJones, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2I just installed this on Ubuntu 8.04 and setup Windows XP Media Center Edition in a virtual machine. So far everything works like a native installation. I have a Hauppauge dual tuner card but have not tried that yet as Windows update wants to install 98 updates. As soon as that is done I will try the tuners and remote controls.
  • pridkett, on 05/05/2008, -0/+3For the folks who are having issues with virtual box booting Ubuntu server or other operating systems where you get a message saying that the CPU doesn't support some feature, it's because the kernel of the OS is assuming the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) are present without checking for them first. Prior to version 1.6 VirtualBox did not support PAE, but now it's an "experimental" feature. Go to the settings of your VM, select General->Advanced and check "Enable PAE/NX". That should do the trick.

    Alternatively, with Ubuntu, you really should be running the virtual kernel. Install server as normal, then before rebooting hit alt-f2 to get a shell. Run "chroot /target". Then "apt-get install linux-virtual". You could also do the same by booting for the install CD and selecting the option to repair the install and running apt-get from there.
  • shadowman99, on 05/05/2008, -1/+1I've been using VMware server and console for some time on a FC8 system (VMware Player is too limited). With the exception of OSX, I've found setting up guest OSes easy. Aside from needing to re-compile after a kernel update, it's hassle free. Is there any advantage to Virtualbox?
  • brokencrystal, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1But can I run Leopard as a guest on Linux? If so, I'm in.
    • OBKenobi, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1You could probably run the x86 hacked version of Leopard? Look for a torrent of it.

      Sorry, I forget the name, but I'm pretty sure you'll find the torrent easily on piratebay.
      • brokencrystal, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2I just want to purchase OSX and install in on VirtualBox or VMWare using emulation. Surely they can emulate a Mac, since it is based on Intel (PC) hardware now.
        • nailer, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2Mac's have slightly different firmware - using EFI rather than regular BIOS. That said, there are EFI emulators for non-Mac hardware around, hence OSX86.
  • ahughes, on 05/05/2008, -1/+1"Has Seamless Desktop Integration which no other Virtualization Solution has!"
    Not true. QEmu does seamless, and so does rdesktop. To a certain extent, Wine does too, although not complete virtualization solution. Seemless VM apps is not an innovation of VirtualBox.
    However, when compared against VMWare and VirtualPC, I suppose it could be.
    • nailer, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1RDesktop can be used to achieve seamless windows but it isn't a virtualization solution and isn't integrated into one - which means work to set it up.

      Do you have info about QEmu's seamless mode (presumably you're saying that's separate from rdesktop - if so awesome)?

      VMware Workstation 6.5 beta has a seamless mode too, called Unity.
  • tripzero, on 05/05/2008, -0/+2upgraded to ubuntu 8.04 and updated to 1.6. I love it! Host Interface doesn't work in Ubuntu yet though. There may be an easy fix, I just haven't found it yet...
  • gcodori, on 05/05/2008, -0/+1I'm assuming that the free/open version of this has the crippled USB "feature"...no? Like in the last version, where if you want to support open software you had to hack it to get full USB functionality.
  • trutwin, on 05/12/2008, -0/+1Late comment but maybe someone will benefit - steer clear of 1.6.0 until they ship 1.6.1 (or try 1.5.6). There are horrible problems with networking and Windows hosts. There's nothing as useless as a virtual machine that can't get on the network, even to talk to the host OS.
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