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Given that Oracle seems to have the midas shit touch (RIP John Dunsworth), does anyone have suggestions on Virtualbox alternatives? VMWare is the obvious one I

by nas 9y ago

Given that Oracle seems to have the midas shit touch (RIP John Dunsworth), does anyone have suggestions on Virtualbox alternatives? VMWare is the obvious one I guess. It's great that they have released 5.2 and that they are adding new things. Virtualbox is a handy tool for me and I'm just afraid one day soon Oracle will turn it to shit.

fulafel 9y ago
Use apps that use your native OS virtualization (Hyper-V, KVM, Docker for Mac/xhyve, etc). Bonus: Less driver crashes, better security and peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps.
- j_s 9y ago
  > peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps Not sure how this works elsewhere but in Windows land I've only ever been able to get one hypervisor per reboot.
  - fulafel 9y ago
    I was thinking of Docker for Windows and the stock Hyper-V VM UI.
baobrien 9y ago
On Linux, I've been using kvm with libvirt and virt-manager as the GUI.
- phjesusthatguy3 9y ago
  +1 to this. KVM and virt-manager Just Work for me on Debian 9. I don't know what I was doing wrong with previous releases but I just installed it, added my user to the correct group, and there I go.
- chainsaw10 9y ago
  Have you gotten Windows to work well as a guest? I could never get it to work as well as it does with VirtualBox.
  - baobrien 9y ago
    I don't know about working as well as it does in VirtualBox, but with the QXL guest driver to do screen resizing and clipboard sharing, it's not too bad.
praneshp 9y ago
It's been an Oracle product for 8 years, I wonder why you chose this particular release to think about searching for alternatives. Maybe you just wanted to pay tribute to John Dunsworth.
- empthought 9y ago
  Oracle just killed Solaris and put JavaEE out to the Eclipse Foundation's hospice. They have been accelerating the purge of Sun Microsystems tech in recent months.
  - stephenr 9y ago
    Doesn't Java being under an oss foundation make it safer?
    - empthought 9y ago
      JavaEE and Java are two completely different things. I don't know if too many people are shedding actual tears over JavaEE, but divesting from its management does indicate that Oracle plans to commit fewer resources to improving the standard and the reference implementations.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
qemu is the best virtualization tool in my opinion.
jsjohnst 9y ago
Let’s be honest, it never was a great product, but the “price was right” compared to commercial alternatives on macOS (Aka VMware and Parallels). With the existence of virtualization natively in the OS (leveraged by xhyve and friends), there’s virtually no reason to use Virtualbox anymore for me (yes, I know that’s not the case for everyone).
- stephenr 9y ago
  The only offering I've seen close to parallels level of functionality is Veertu, which is a seemingly abandoned product since they released their CI tool Anka. When I last tested it, Veertu wasn't reliable enough to suggest even as a $0 option.
KGIII 9y ago
I am a huge VMware fan and have been for a long time. Caution: I have found mentioning this confuses people because I'm often mistaken for a FOSS zealot. I am not. I just prefer FOSS because I like to tinker. I have no moral qualms with closed source. So, if you do decide to go VMware, you may get odd questions if you mention it. That has actually been the most difficult thing about using it. They are well supported and feature rich. I've been paying them for years.

by nas 9y ago

fulafel 9y ago

Use apps that use your native OS virtualization (Hyper-V, KVM, Docker for Mac/xhyve, etc). Bonus: Less driver crashes, better security and peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps.

j_s 9y ago
> peaceful coexistence of different virtualization apps Not sure how this works elsewhere but in Windows land I've only ever been able to get one hypervisor per reboot.
- fulafel 9y ago
  I was thinking of Docker for Windows and the stock Hyper-V VM UI.

baobrien 9y ago

On Linux, I've been using kvm with libvirt and virt-manager as the GUI.

phjesusthatguy3 9y ago
+1 to this. KVM and virt-manager Just Work for me on Debian 9. I don't know what I was doing wrong with previous releases but I just installed it, added my user to the correct group, and there I go.
chainsaw10 9y ago
Have you gotten Windows to work well as a guest? I could never get it to work as well as it does with VirtualBox.
- baobrien 9y ago
  I don't know about working as well as it does in VirtualBox, but with the QXL guest driver to do screen resizing and clipboard sharing, it's not too bad.

praneshp 9y ago

It's been an Oracle product for 8 years, I wonder why you chose this particular release to think about searching for alternatives. Maybe you just wanted to pay tribute to John Dunsworth.

empthought 9y ago
Oracle just killed Solaris and put JavaEE out to the Eclipse Foundation's hospice. They have been accelerating the purge of Sun Microsystems tech in recent months.
- stephenr 9y ago
  Doesn't Java being under an oss foundation make it safer?
  - empthought 9y ago
    JavaEE and Java are two completely different things. I don't know if too many people are shedding actual tears over JavaEE, but divesting from its management does indicate that Oracle plans to commit fewer resources to improving the standard and the reference implementations.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

qemu is the best virtualization tool in my opinion.

jsjohnst 9y ago

Let’s be honest, it never was a great product, but the “price was right” compared to commercial alternatives on macOS (Aka VMware and Parallels). With the existence of virtualization natively in the OS (leveraged by xhyve and friends), there’s virtually no reason to use Virtualbox anymore for me (yes, I know that’s not the case for everyone).

stephenr 9y ago
The only offering I've seen close to parallels level of functionality is Veertu, which is a seemingly abandoned product since they released their CI tool Anka. When I last tested it, Veertu wasn't reliable enough to suggest even as a $0 option.

KGIII 9y ago

I am a huge VMware fan and have been for a long time. Caution: I have found mentioning this confuses people because I'm often mistaken for a FOSS zealot. I am not. I just prefer FOSS because I like to tinker. I have no moral qualms with closed source. So, if you do decide to go VMware, you may get odd questions if you mention it. That has actually been the most difficult thing about using it. They are well supported and feature rich. I've been paying them for years.