Open Source Society

VirtualBox: Emancipation for Virtual Machines
Posted on December 10, 2007 at 8:57 pm by Josh

If you’re scared of trying a new operating system because some of your programs won’t work, or if you want a way to try out a new system without changing your existing setup, then let me introduce you to virtual machines. A virtual machine allows you to emulate an entire computer within your existing operating system. I’m sure you, my imaginative reader, can imagine all sorts of ways this would be useful. Some of you may already be familiar with commercial virtual machine software. Luckily for those of us who are open source enthusiasts, or just plain broke, there is an open alternative to high-priced commercial emulators. VirtualBox is that alternative.

Let’s see some of the features that make VirtualBox so praiseworthy. The first thing to note before I get to the eye-candy is that even under heavy usage of two operating systems simultaneously, I have never experienced more than a slight dip in performance in either operating system. VB is extremely efficient at managing resources, and gives you quite a bit of control over what limits it should respect. There was even an instance where I decided to play a game under emulated Windows to pass the time while compiling a large program, and I actually forgot to check on the compilation because the game performed so well! If you still aren’t convinced, it’s time for some screenshots. Click the thumbnails to view a larger version.

Here’s the main screen, showing all the configured virtual machines and the attributes of each. From here you can boot a virtual machine, change settings, or add and delete machines.

Select a machine and press start, and away we go. This shows XP booting up.

XP Booted and ready to go. Notice my Kicker bar at the bottom, still showing my Linux pride! This window is completely resizeable, and the desktop will automatically adjust.

Here’s Internet Explorer viewing our favorite website. Windows applications and install and run exactly as they would under a “real” installation. XP itself is installed onto the virtual machine exactly as it would be on a normal machine, and it never knows the difference.

Here’s a peek at seamless mode. Now my Windows applications and my Linux applications work side-by-side in perfect harmony.

Here are several Windows and Linux applications all cooperating nicely, and being very efficient with my system resources.

Here’s something you don’t see every day.

So for those of you like me who for practical or emotional reasons cannot completely cut the cord, VirtualBox provides a perfect compromise. There is no reason you couldn’t run a Linux distribution inside of Windows, although this is obviously not my recommended configuration.

VirtualBox brings the power of virtual machines to the desktop of every computer owner. I use it on a daily basis to run programs I use at work that will not run reliably under Wine, and have no open-source equivalent. I also use it to test live distributions and software designed to run on firewalls and servers. Before I took the full plunge into Linux, I also used it to test out several distributions under Windows, until I found one I liked. I’ve used the commercial equivalents as well, and found VirtualBox to be lacking nowhere in features, and far superior in actual performance. In case you missed the link before, you can learn more about VirtualBox and download a copy for your computer at www.virtualbox.org.