Virtualbox or vmware server?

[John W]

I've used virtualbox and am impressed with it. Have also found that it's possible to run and existing xp installation from it too without conversion - not tried yet. I found a great link on building up a mandriva system on this site but it installs vmserver. I thought vmserver was payfor ware? Also does anyone have any opinions on the relative merits of these 2 packages. I must stress that virtualbox looks very good to me. I used the binary to get usb support. I haven't tried connecting to a networked printer yet but hope that a straight windoze printer driver install will look after that.

 

John

 

 

[moved from Software by spinynorman]

[mindwave]

Funny you ask, I was just considering creating an original post concerning VBOX and XP and MDV, so here goes....

 

I promised my wife that if I could convert the garage to "my area" we would only ever need one pc in the house, HERS.

 

as long as I could load my companies VPN sw on it, I could handle my on call from there.

 

At the time I was in my SUSE mode, I had just come from their V10 roll out w/ XEN built in and was guaranteed by the Novell rep that SUSE 10 ENT would come out of the dvd, setup and ready to run XP for my VPN, and I'd be off!!!!!

 

Well I was off all right.

 

MANY SUSE (everything from 9.0 to 10.2) installs later, I never have gotten XEN to work the way I need it to.

 

So I went to VMWARE, its "relatively" free and would do what i needed (or so I thought) after MANY hours of trying to get things moving I found that there is a LOT to like about SUSE, but its VM support isnt one of them.

 

Then I found MCNL (a small MDV remaster) with VBOX built in.

 

Loaded it opn my laptop (1.8ghz 1GB ram) and it built, booted and VPN'd straight into my work desktop!

 

NO BRAINER.

 

So then I started gravitating back to MDV, and with 2007.1 came all the way back and built a new desktop (X2 5.6GHZ 4GB RAM).

 

Loaded 2008, loaded VBOX, loaded XP, loaded my VPN and connected right on through.

 

Over the last 6 months I have found myself using my XP pc less and less.

 

The ONE drawback is that my AXIM is using windows 2003 mobil and right now its not supported (which is a REAL bummer).

 

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, VBOX works GREAT, its a no brainer to use and setup, and it runs rock solid.

 

why in the WORLD would i want to dual boot?

 

I've done so in the past, typically with little or no problems, but I know me and I know that if I dual boot for too long the day will come when the whole thing fubars and then NOTHING would boot.

 

this way, if XP takes a dump, I delete the VM, recreate and voila I'm off!

 

now I'm not playnig games or running high speed video, but fir day to day its GREAT.

 

My XP pc is now relegated to MASSIVE downloads, torrents, and simultaneous burnings

 

my 2 cts

[scarecrow]

If you intend just running XP under Linux for mainstream apps then VirtualBox is the simplest solution.

If you want running multiple OS'es and deploy/develop apps on them, then VMWare is clearly the better solution, as perfomance-wise and feature-wise it's much superior to Virtualbox.

If you are a gamer, not having much luck with wine or Cedega, and want to try them under a virtual machine, you have to try the new VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta, which has decent DirectX9 support- the one in VMWare server is scant, while the one in Virtualbox is non-existent.

Proceed according to your needs.

Edited June 5, 2008 by scarecrow