5 ms·

I really like vbox. When work forced me to have MS windows box I did 90℅ of my time in Fullscreen vb running Ubuntu. I also ran widows vbs. Now on osx I run d

I really like vbox. When work forced me to have MS windows box I did 90℅ of my time in Fullscreen vb running Ubuntu. I also ran widows vbs. Now on osx I run dev db and other server as needed. Nice to roll back to snapshot Fits in tool box for non automated, as hoc servers. Dont have to configure anything, or write script. Just acts like buying new hardware and slipping in CD.

tonyplee 10y ago
It also lets me test/try out different releases, distributions of Linux/BSD/Android.
WayneBro 10y ago
Sounds like you did the exact wrong thing at your last job. "Going with the flow" is usually the best practice. At least Windows can be run in a VM unlike Hitler's OS (for the dim-witted: that's OS X).
- heheocoenev 10y ago
  Wtf is hitler os? It probably does run in vbox whatever it is. Don't forget to compile with --disable-godwin
- sctb 10y ago
  > ... Hitler's OS (for the dim-witted: that's OS X). Please stop violating the guidelines by posting such deliberately inflammatory and uninformative comments. That's not what this site is for.
  - WayneBro 10y ago
    No apparently the site is for talking shit about Windows continuously.
sootzoo 10y ago
I really had problems going this route (Ubuntu host with Windows guest). While the guest ran in VB reasonably well, trying to snapshot a baseline image and generally use VBox differencing disks quickly ran me out of space on the host SSD. Even with a 256GB drive and a number of tweaks like hosting the Windows pagefile and temp from a passthrough disk, disabling Windows automatic updates, and using an immutable disk containing the OS install/multi-attach for copy-on-write behavior, VBox still used a ton of space to track the differences from my baseline snapshots. Even starting the VM quickly consumed 10-20GB in the new disk image. Was hard to conclude anything other than it wasn't a viable "dual workstation" setup and I capitulated and moved to Windows 10. Sucks, because it was really quite nice to have a unix under the hood, though WSL makes this a bit more tolerable in Win 10 AU.
- robocat 10y ago
  A 512GB SSD is minimum for multi-VM dev. I have Ubuntu host and ran out of space after a few VM's on 256GB. I wasted a lot of time(money) trying to slim down the Windows installs, a few hours&dollars to upgrade SSD was good investment ...
- pizza234 10y ago
  It's inappropriate to target space saving when it comes virtualization, as it's not what hypervisors are designed for - if so, a hypervisor would have to interpret the underlying FS calls, and optimize them space-wise. Besides, I think pretty much all the formats behave the same; qcow2 for example, does not optimize on the fly the writing of zeros. All in all though, if you ultimately moved to a native Windows 10, therefore allocated X space of native disk, the space requirement is not different from having only a virtualized one with X space of virtualized disk (heck, you could even pass a partition). Having said that, if 10-20 GB of space are taken so quickly on boot, it may be worth investigating (you could even vim the diff disk), but I find your claim somewhat misleading, as you're likely experiencing this on the first absolute boot after taking then snapshot, but not on the subsequent ones; therefore, if your system steadily takes 20+20 GB of space, that's a perfectly reasonable requirement.

tonyplee 10y ago

It also lets me test/try out different releases, distributions of Linux/BSD/Android.

WayneBro 10y ago

Sounds like you did the exact wrong thing at your last job. "Going with the flow" is usually the best practice. At least Windows can be run in a VM unlike Hitler's OS (for the dim-witted: that's OS X).

heheocoenev 10y ago
Wtf is hitler os? It probably does run in vbox whatever it is. Don't forget to compile with --disable-godwin
sctb 10y ago
> ... Hitler's OS (for the dim-witted: that's OS X). Please stop violating the guidelines by posting such deliberately inflammatory and uninformative comments. That's not what this site is for.
- WayneBro 10y ago
  No apparently the site is for talking shit about Windows continuously.

sootzoo 10y ago

I really had problems going this route (Ubuntu host with Windows guest). While the guest ran in VB reasonably well, trying to snapshot a baseline image and generally use VBox differencing disks quickly ran me out of space on the host SSD. Even with a 256GB drive and a number of tweaks like hosting the Windows pagefile and temp from a passthrough disk, disabling Windows automatic updates, and using an immutable disk containing the OS install/multi-attach for copy-on-write behavior, VBox still used a ton of space to track the differences from my baseline snapshots. Even starting the VM quickly consumed 10-20GB in the new disk image. Was hard to conclude anything other than it wasn't a viable "dual workstation" setup and I capitulated and moved to Windows 10. Sucks, because it was really quite nice to have a unix under the hood, though WSL makes this a bit more tolerable in Win 10 AU.

robocat 10y ago
A 512GB SSD is minimum for multi-VM dev. I have Ubuntu host and ran out of space after a few VM's on 256GB. I wasted a lot of time(money) trying to slim down the Windows installs, a few hours&dollars to upgrade SSD was good investment ...
pizza234 10y ago
It's inappropriate to target space saving when it comes virtualization, as it's not what hypervisors are designed for - if so, a hypervisor would have to interpret the underlying FS calls, and optimize them space-wise. Besides, I think pretty much all the formats behave the same; qcow2 for example, does not optimize on the fly the writing of zeros. All in all though, if you ultimately moved to a native Windows 10, therefore allocated X space of native disk, the space requirement is not different from having only a virtualized one with X space of virtualized disk (heck, you could even pass a partition). Having said that, if 10-20 GB of space are taken so quickly on boot, it may be worth investigating (you could even vim the diff disk), but I find your claim somewhat misleading, as you're likely experiencing this on the first absolute boot after taking then snapshot, but not on the subsequent ones; therefore, if your system steadily takes 20+20 GB of space, that's a perfectly reasonable requirement.