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I run VMWare fusion on my Mac for virtualization. Being able to bump the Linux desktop to what the full retina screen can handle is glorious (though I had to f

by heelix 7y ago

I run VMWare fusion on my Mac for virtualization. Being able to bump the Linux desktop to what the full retina screen can handle is glorious (though I had to fiddle with sizes on the terminal to find something that my eyes could work with). Got a Windows VM for the occasional MSI things that head my way. Nice access to the hardware - disk, cpu, memory - with a lot of snapshot management. I've got both Oracle's VirtualBox and VMWare's product, and VMWare is superior on everything but the price.

gorgoiler 7y ago
What’s superior with VMWare? I’m a virtual box user (via vagrant) but would switch for a compelling feature set. Performance, IPv6?
- heelix 7y ago
  The snapshot options are much better in fusion, for that solo workflow, then stock virtualbox. I suspect vagrant covers those gaps. Long running (and pausing) VMs behave better on fusion. I see better stability when pushed hard. Better use of the hardware. Been a long time since I ran benchmarks, but the same VM was about 4-10 seconds faster on a 2 minute process. Not enough to matter for most. The native disk access helps with things that are IO sensitive. The UI drivers are better... so if you open up and run a Linux desktop, it feels much more native, if that is a thing. I don't think I've even opened virtualbox in the last couple years... so my comparisons may be dated. YMMV
  - gorgoiler 7y ago
    Thanks for the write up.
    - lloeki 7y ago
      I’ll add idle usage. VirtualBox shaves one-two hours off my MBP’s battery while Fusion leaves it untouched. Vbox graphics performance also left much to be desired: e.g dragging a terminal window around was slow, produced insane tearing and huge performance impact, and no amount of tuning would help; I’m not even talking about 3D stuff, this is just some plain X lightweight WM without a compositor. No such issue on Fusion, where I just imported the same VM.
- MonaroVXR 7y ago
  Running MacOS may be better in VMWare Workstation. But it also depends if you using VMware Fusion on MacOS or VMWare Workstation on Windows and Linux. But if you use Linux I would suggest using KVM/QEMU and on Windows, Hyper-V. You can use Vagrant with both KVM and Hyper-V. I can't use Windows boxes with Vagrant on Linux. It doesn't seem to work that great.

by heelix 7y ago

gorgoiler 7y ago

What’s superior with VMWare? I’m a virtual box user (via vagrant) but would switch for a compelling feature set. Performance, IPv6?

heelix 7y ago
The snapshot options are much better in fusion, for that solo workflow, then stock virtualbox. I suspect vagrant covers those gaps. Long running (and pausing) VMs behave better on fusion. I see better stability when pushed hard. Better use of the hardware. Been a long time since I ran benchmarks, but the same VM was about 4-10 seconds faster on a 2 minute process. Not enough to matter for most. The native disk access helps with things that are IO sensitive. The UI drivers are better... so if you open up and run a Linux desktop, it feels much more native, if that is a thing. I don't think I've even opened virtualbox in the last couple years... so my comparisons may be dated. YMMV
- gorgoiler 7y ago
  Thanks for the write up.
  - lloeki 7y ago
    I’ll add idle usage. VirtualBox shaves one-two hours off my MBP’s battery while Fusion leaves it untouched. Vbox graphics performance also left much to be desired: e.g dragging a terminal window around was slow, produced insane tearing and huge performance impact, and no amount of tuning would help; I’m not even talking about 3D stuff, this is just some plain X lightweight WM without a compositor. No such issue on Fusion, where I just imported the same VM.
MonaroVXR 7y ago
Running MacOS may be better in VMWare Workstation. But it also depends if you using VMware Fusion on MacOS or VMWare Workstation on Windows and Linux. But if you use Linux I would suggest using KVM/QEMU and on Windows, Hyper-V. You can use Vagrant with both KVM and Hyper-V. I can't use Windows boxes with Vagrant on Linux. It doesn't seem to work that great.