7 ms·
VirtualBox 7.0.12
- kstrauser 3y agoLovely piece of software, but if you turn off the lights and say “Extension Pack” 3 times, an Oracle lawyer climbs out of the screen and hits you with an audit.
- applied_heat 3y agoI wanted to buy a license for the extension pack and they said not to worry unless I was using hundreds of installs.
- kstrauser 3y agoWhen the devil tells you not to worry about the details of the contract, you worry about the details.
- ddlsmurf 3y agoIndeed, do you have that gracious offer in writing ?
- trog 3y agoI suspect they probably actively try to avoid people that only have one or two installs - there's not enough money in it & casual users are probably more likely to just abandon the product rather than try to get some crazy licensing deal approved with Oracle (I certainly would). So those users would be reasonably big timesinks with little possibility of phat commissions at the end of it. Much better to make the initial inquiry & find out if their stalking horse of making VirtualBox free has meant it's landed in a large organisation where they might have many installs & they're much more likely to get a big payday for roughly the same amount of effort.
- kijin 3y agoWhy even bother going through a crazy licensing deal? They could just write a shrink-wrapped license attached to an online payment form like everyone else does. Only require talking to a sales rep if the quantity is above a certain threshold. Oh wait, this is Oracle. They don't know how to handle amounts smaller than a few grand.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dylan604 3y agoEverything you just wrote are the wet dreams of lawyers. Especially those that work for companies like Oracle.
- barkingcat 3y agoThis is pretty much entrapment.
- kstrauser 3y agoEntrapment would be if they coerced you into doing it when you weren’t going to do it on your own.
- barkingcat 3y agowell the poster there wanted to buy a license, but was coerced by the oracle rep into using it without a license. (so they weren't going to use it unlicensed to begin with)
- mrweasel 3y agoWe got hit with that in reverse and management had to ban installing VirtualBox. Oracle waited around until we had 25 (or 50) installs and then started to demand a lot of money. In the end it was cheaper to just get more VMware Fusion licenses.
- addicted 3y agoTranslation: Your company does not have enough users for us to sue yet.
- dataflow 3y agoAlso, if you say "WSL2" 3 times, a magic green turtle shell appears underneath you.
- publicmail 3y agoTrue, but the extension pack isn’t really necessary these days for most people. It used to be required for usb 3.0 support but now that’s included in the base GPL package.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoDon't you still need it for folder and clipboard sharing? Obviously that may or may not matter, but it's not nothing.
- squarefoot 3y agoI'm running 7.0.10 and to share directories and clipboard data only the "guest additions" package is needed, which is free but closed source; no idea if they changed anything in newer versions though. I would have migrated ages ago to fully FOSS alternatives, but every time I wanted to use a GUI interface to do something non trivial that would require more clicks on a shell (the above features, plus changing ethernet interface modes, etc), I had to struggle with the simple truth that the vast majority of FOSS developers don't have a clue when designing an UI that is not aimed at themselves but actual users (which would be also the case for a lot of other FOSS). There is simply no match, all FOSS virtualization GUIs are ages behind VB, and that hurts me because VB GUI is stupidly simple, but clearly very well thought when it comes to actual usability. People should realize that good interface designers aren't failed programmers, and there is a huge need for them, both in free and proprietary software.
- TMWNN 3y agoIs the extension pack still needed for VNC?
- jakogut 3y agoQEMU is also a lovely piece of software, and completely free and open source. It lacks the graphical interface of VirtualBox, but it's more scriptable, in my opinion. In fact, virt-manager basically bridges the gap between VirtualBox and QEMU with the unfortunate dependency of libvirt.
- jcrben 3y agoWhy is libvirt unfortunate?
- jakogut 3y agoOften users only want QEMU, with a graphical interface on top. Libvirt is not just a graphical interface, but also an abstraction over multiple virtualization backends. It tends to add complexity, while making more advanced usage of specific virtualization backends more difficult. Especially with its own configuration format based on XML. Edit: Correction, libvirt is not the graphical interface, but entirely the virtualization abstraction. Virt-manager one of several interfaces.
- cassianoleal 3y ago> It lacks the graphical interface of VirtualBox On macOS, UTM bridges that gap. It's also compatible with the native virtualisation stack which makes for extremely speedy VMs (boots in literally 1-2s, great performance overall - except for some lag on the GUI).
- mieses 3y agoI tried to run Win XP on UTM on MacOS x64 about a year ago. it worked but it was many, many, (1000x) times slower than virtualbox or parallels. I didn't want to dig into it after wasting 2 hours. internet comments indicated that UTM is slower but hid the truth of how much slower it is. UTM doesn't work.
- cassianoleal 3y agoI've only run Windows (and not XP) on this a couple times so I can't comment on that much. I have run x86 Win10 on UTM on an M2 Mac and didn't have performance issues but in fairness I didn't actually do much with it - mostly accessing thumb drives formatted with NTFS. I do regularly run arm64 Linux on it though, and it's been quite stellar for that use case.
- bbkane 3y agoI needed a local VM ony Mac recently, but luckily I found Lima via this blog post [0]. So glad Lima works so well and I don't have to worry about running afoul of Oracle's extension pack licensing. [0] https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/07/10/lima--a-nice-way-to-run-linux-vms-on-mac/ https://jvns.ca/blog/2023/07/10/lima--a-nice-way-to-run-linu...
- ReleaseCandidat 3y agoAs a graphical frontend to Qemu on ARM Macs I can recommend UTM (that's what I've been using daily since about a year ago) https://mac.getutm.app/ https://mac.getutm.app/
- anta40 3y agoBeing able to easily access host files? Well... let's give it a try. Then perhaps I can ditch VirtualBox happily.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoAnyone know about their telemetry? Been meaning to investigate what the extension pack really does as well.
- sandreas 3y agoI was shocked by the performance hit of virtual box. Did never think that it would be such a big difference using qemu, which is way faster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq849CpGd88 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq849CpGd88
- tiffanyh 3y agoWhat’s the current state of VB vs UTM vs Lima vs Orbstack?
- dimgl 3y agoUTM is one of the most impressive pieces of tech I've ever used. I was able to run Windows 3.1 on my M1 Macbook, which blew my mind given the sheer number of architectural differences between the two.
- tiffanyh 3y agoIs running super old OS’es the primary use case for UTM?
- xrd 3y agoDo you use the command line tool? I tried that and it segfaults. I have been using UTM but not being able to manage the VMs from ssh in a pinch is frustrating.
- dimgl 3y agoAh, no I do not. I was using the GUI. I can see how having an SSH server is useful though!
- gattilorenz 3y agoDepending on your use case, you’re probably better served by 86Box though. Qemu emulates a somewhat generic x86 pc (and MANY other architectures) with a generic vga/vesa card, while 86box focuses on emulating 8088-late 90s computers, actual devices included, which means you will have better driver support at the cost of speed (but why would you need a windows 3.1 setup to run faster than on a 333Mhz Pentium II? :) )
- dylan604 3y agoOh good gawd! You are a glutton for punishment. Did you have an actual need for running some piece of software critical to business, or was this for the sheer bonkers sense of "but does it run Doom" type of curiosity?
- malux85 3y agoI used to use virtual box simply because it was free and convenient, but I recently switched to KVM + libvirtd and holy smokes, the vms are running much faster, A lot of my work is CPU bound on my hobby project (https://atomictessellator.com https://atomictessellator.com) and I have noticed a good 20-40% speed up, when you’re doing 10s thousands simulations a day, that’s a big difference. Sorry virtual box, you’ll always have a fond place in my memory, but it’s time to retire you :)
- wg0 3y agoOn Linux, KVM+libvirt are unmatchable. VB is really slow in comparison as far as I have experienced.
- magicalhippo 3y agoHow's the network speed in the VM? I got some VMs running on Bhyve on FreeBSD, but only get like ~2Gbps average between VMs and host.
- olavgg 3y agoI use Mellanox ConnectX 3 for 15 USD on Ebay and SR-IOV which provides virtual functions for my VM's, and get full 40Gbps.
- magicalhippo 3y agoGot some ConnectX 2's now, was thinking of upgrading. Good to know this works, thanks.
- keithnz 3y agois there a sweet spot for VirtualBox these days? It was great years ago, but there are so many alternatives now
- anta40 3y agoperhaps for running whatever non Linux/BSD OSes like DOS or those homebrew OSes ?
- rnd0 3y agoQemu might actually be easier for that use case?
- rnd0 3y agonot sure if this is what you mean; but you can make a backup file (ova) of your VM and it'll run on any platform that Virtualbox supports. As far as I know, qemu doesn't have an option like that, nor does VMWare Player. I don't know what Workstation does or doesn't have in that regard.
- gumballindie 3y agoVirtualbox needs to get pci passthrough back on. Although i love qemu and it being open source and free i just find virtual box super convenient.