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Be careful about VirtualBox Extensions which is non free on commercial environments. Oracle is hunting non compliance and VB provides them with lots of telemetr
by tmn007 8y ago
Be careful about VirtualBox Extensions which is non free on commercial environments. Oracle is hunting non compliance and VB provides them with lots of telemetry.
- CrLf 8y agoIf you're using virtualbox together with vagrant, you're highly unlikely to need the extension pack anyway.
- maaaats 8y ago> Be careful about VirtualBox Extensions Don't you mean: Be careful to follow the licensing for whatever products you use.
- organsnyder 8y agoThe extension pack is extremely easy to download by accident: for instance, it comes in the default Chocolately installation unless you pass a flag to disable it. With Oracle actively going around and sending threatening letters to enterprises with extensions download traffic coming from their IP blocks, it's easy to accidentally get in a bad situation.
- AlexCoventry 8y agoThis is separate from the guest extensions ISO image, right? What kind of functionality do the extensions discussed here cover?
- sound1 8y agoI would love to know thw answer to above question
- organsnyder 8y agoYes, this is separate from the guest extensions. Here's information on it: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02.html#intro-installing https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch02.html#intro-installing
- kkarakk 8y agosometimes you just want a simple vb ubuntu vm. however virtualbox locks copy paste from host to vm support behind extensions which are free only for personal use(which you are using but good luck proving that in court)
- snacklesnapp 8y agoNo. Copy-paste is not locked behind the VirtualBox Extension Pack. It requires the Guest Additions, which are completely different from the Extension Pack. Extension Pack gives things such as USB passthrough.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoIt's kinda weird that VirtualPC way back when is the only VM software I recall using that had copy-paste without guest extensions. Granted, it just typed text into the keyboard, but it was really handy none the less.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoI've taken to a macro that automatically "types" the contents of the clipboard when I hit a hotkey. Super useful with VMs and remote access.
- thecatspaw 8y agodoes that work fine with lag? No dropped characters?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y agoThat is indeed a problem :-) I had to bump up the delay between characters and particularly slow connections or serial consoles still can bite me. Mostly I still consider it worth using though, since fixing a few small typos is less work than typing the whole thing by hand.
- Jedd 8y agoThis is not necessarily straightforward. Also, Oracle has form. On the page cited there's no reference to licence/license. Fair enough - it's a release notes page. The only sub-page (using the menu on the left) that contains any reference to licence is the Contributors page, which isn't somewhere most users would head to. The primary page - https://www.virtualbox.org/ https://www.virtualbox.org/ - has one reference to Licence - and that's as part of the assurance that VirtualBox is "an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License". And if you read that, assumed the best, and went on your way, you'd soon be in breach. (Yes, you should probably visit https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ despite the above assurance on the front page -- at which point you'd learn about the Extension pack, the PUEL, and other usage constraints.)
- simonh 8y agoThis is Oracle. The Extension Pack has additional features particularly valuable in an enterprise environment, BUT there is no way to actually buy a commercial license and as per some other threads Oracle salespeople are advising enterprise customers to just use it anyway. Oracle setting a licensing trap they can spring at their whim? Perish the thought!
- Drdrdrq 8y agoIt is unbelieveable that a company which employs such tactics against their users can survive. I know I avoid their products like plague, Java and DB included.
- marcosdumay 8y agoI'm pretty sure the GP means: Be careful not to install unlicensed proprietary software thinking it's part of the free software that has basically the same name.
- porker 8y agoHow do you license them? I've never seen a "Buy now" link, only the text about "Free for personal use" every time.
- krylon 8y agoI vaguely recall that this was discussed here on HN a while ago and somebody who had actually tried to buy the necessary license reported that Oracle would not sell them the license; IIRC, the sales person told them to "just use it, we don't care", or something along those lines. Which is very problematic, of course, without something in writing, and given Oracle's reputation.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoThat's awkward as hell. It's sad that their offering is the only decent one out there (for my needs and with that UX) that's at least got open source options. I hope VirtualPC from Microsoft becomes cross-platform and open sourced, or at least some sort of new VM software from Microsoft, since they seem to be doing a better job at offering up MIT licensed projects lately.
- dhimes 8y agoI wouldn't even mind shelling out $50 for a license if I needed one, but they won't let me. It takes $5000, because they require a purchase of 100 or more at a time. It feels like they don't want to spend time on small stuff, and really don't care.
- ikeboy 8y agoCan also buy a socket license for 1k, or buy from resellers with lower MOQ: e.g. https://m.cdw.com/product/oracle-vm-virtualbox-enterprise-license/2652849 https://m.cdw.com/product/oracle-vm-virtualbox-enterprise-li...
- user5994461 8y agoVMWare does the same thing. No idea why you'd think Oracle is the only competitor.
- teekert 8y agoUhm, this scares me a bit, how do you of you have the Extensions or not? Would be nice if the Windows Subsystem for Linux started officially supporting graphical apps or a full VM.
- dtech 8y agoYou explicitly need to install them and accept the license
- teekert 8y agoHmm, there used to be an "ose" edition which lacked some usb patch through stuff I believe, it's not related to that? Haven't seen that in a while but it used to be 2 separate downloads... So it's not any of that stuff you can select on the "Custom Setup" screen then...
- shawnz 8y agoIt's a seperate download, not anything that you can get with the normal VirtualBox installer. On an unrelated note, have you considered a third-party X server for windows, like Xming or VcXsrv, for use with your WSL apps?
- teekert 8y agoYes, it works, still doesn't really come near the experience of a full VM with dropdown terminals and sshfs in the filemanager etc.
- shawnz 8y agoHave you tried the "one large window" mode rather than the "multiple windows" mode? That could be closer to what you want. See: https://i2.wp.com/www.maxtblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Launch_XServer_2017-01-20_16-22-08.jpg https://i2.wp.com/www.maxtblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/0...
- jason_slack 8y agoSorry. I have never heard of this. I switched to VB earlier this year for simple home use testing apps and working with large data sets. VMWare Fusion just caused me to many problems. Can you explain how I need to protect myself?
- coldtea 8y agoYou switched to VB because VMWare Fusion was problematic? That sounds like exchanging a Toyota for an Edsel.
- jason_slack 8y agoWell when Fusion doesn’t run, vm’s become corrupt and VMWare answers your support query with “your new MacBook Pro must have a hardware issue”. Yes, I did switch. They lost my $80/year for upgrades and I have been a user since v3. And Virtual Box has been more reliable than Fusion ever was for me.
- mr_toad 8y agoIf you’re a home user, and you’re sitting behind an IP address provided by a residential ISP, Oracle isn’t going to be bothering you.
- jason_slack 8y agoSo they are only looking for the gross level violators.
- gsich 8y agoBlock telemetry.
- jason_slack 8y agoCan you share?
- gsich 8y agoI guessed it was a just a checkbox/config option. If not this would be very dubious.