Your favorite Virtual Machine software?

[bobn4burton]

So I want to start working with some virtual machines. I'm just wondering if there is a 'best' VM software out there? I know of VMware and Virtual PC 2007...are there any others that I should look into?

Anyways...just trying to decide which VM software to use...so list which is your favorite and why!

[Damodred]

I have used VMWare, VirtualPC and Parallels. Favourite would be the first, but to be honest they are all fairly similar to each other.

[SuperSubZero]

For just VM tinkering, or getting your feet wet, I recommend Virtualbox (www.virtualbox.org).

[Hurdler]

I've played with a lot of them, and I personally liked Virtual Server 2005 from Microsoft the best. If you're going to be using Server OS's, then give that a serious look.

[teststrips]

if you will be hosting only microsoft OS's in your virtual environments, than Virtual Machine 2005 would be your best bet. If hosting Linuxes vmware or virtualbox would be better.

Microsoft's product is really easy to set up, but only fully supports Windows OS's fully. The other OSes will load fine, but in graphical mode your mouse gets "stuck" in the virtual machine.. you have to hit a keyboard sequence to release your mouse from the virtual window to control other stuff.

The others are a bit harder to set up, but I'm guessing they all support other OS's so its more of a seamless switch back to your host OS.

I use Virtual Machine to host a fairly clean XP install... When I feel I need a new tool to do something, I install it there first to make sure it doesn't have nasty spyware or isn't a sucky program.

[eeyrjmr]

I really like virtualbox
really easy to use and very quick to setup a machince, but that is more for desktop quick test (ie quick test a liveCD install process)

for virtual machine gotta be Xen and full hypervisor

[Monkey God]

Ive only used Virtual PC 2004 and 07, and like them quite a bit.

[bobn4burton]

OK...so here are some of the things that would be important to me.

1. Real-time (or very close to) machine performance in VM
2. Most hardware function in VM (USB2, sound card, etc)
3. Directx support?? This may not be possible or fast enough yet...but it'd sure be nice!
4. Does any VM software support multiple 'independent input devices'? For instance...if I have a 2 or 3 monitor setup...can I Have a virtual machine full screen on each monitor and have them all independently controlled via different mouse/keyboards? Something similar to this functionality, but for windows, http://userful.com/

Probably should have posted the above in my first post...but better late than never!

[darktiger]

Can any of them run the Windows version of OSX?

[DeaconFrost]

Can any of them run the Windows version of OSX?
VirtualBox is working on it, I believe. I prefer VirtualBox if I plan to use Windows and Linux VMs. If I am only using Windows VMs, I prefer VirtualPC 2007.

[BillLeeLee]

My favorites are VMWare Workstation and Virtualbox. I use VMW WS the most since I develop stuff and VMW (Server, WS, ESX) is the standard virtualization tool at my job.

OK...so here are some of the things that would be important to me.

1. Real-time (or very close to) machine performance in VM
2. Most hardware function in VM (USB2, sound card, etc)
3. Directx support?? This may not be possible or fast enough yet...but it'd sure be nice!
4. Does any VM software support multiple 'independent input devices'? For instance...if I have a 2 or 3 monitor setup...can I Have a virtual machine full screen on each monitor and have them all independently controlled via different mouse/keyboards? Something similar to this functionality, but for windows, http://userful.com/

Probably should have posted the above in my first post...but better late than never!

1 - VMWare and Virtualbox are near native speed. Other packages are also near native. Virtualization CPU extensions could be helpful.
2 - USB2, sound card work, but I only really use those in a Windows guest OS. I have not tested in Linux. However, some devices will not work.
3 - If you're using the Mac OS X VM softwares (Parallels and VMWare Fusion) they have good DX 8.1 support. Otherwise, graphical acceleration is experimental in Linux/Windows.
4 - You can put VMs on different monitors (VMWare Workstation, I do not know about VBox or Server since the only multi monitor machine I use has VMW WS). No multiple keyboard/mice on one machine though.

[Mithent]

Can any of them run the Windows version of OSX?

The version hacked to work on PCs without Apple TPM and EFI? I wouldn't say it was really a "Windows" version?

[SockMan!]

I've only tried two: Virtual PC 2007 and VMWare Server. I tried out VPC first and though it was pretty darn cool, but then I tried VMWare server and never looked back - unless I really wanted soundblaster 16 emulation or OS2 support. Haven't tried MS Virtual Server yet since I have little motivation to do so.

I'm just using VMs for basic testing and playing - both at work and at home.

[SuperSubZero]

Can any of them run the Windows version of OSX?

What exactly is the "Windows version of OSX"? OS X is an operating system for Apple computers.

[SpaceHonkey]

What exactly is the "Windows version of OSX"? OS X is an operating system for Apple computers.

osx86 (http://www.osx86project.org/)

[Mithent]

osx86 (http://www.osx86project.org/)

That's kinda a bad name, too.. OS X is x86 now, and at least partly x64! But it's certainly no more "Windows OSX" than Ubuntu is "Windows Linux"; perhaps "PC OS X" would be better, but Macs are very close to PCs now anyway, bar the use of EFI which will probably stop being a distinguishing factor in the future.

[SuperSubZero]

osx86 (http://www.osx86project.org/)
What does Windows have in *any* way, shape, or form, to OSX86?

(hint: it's nothing)

[DeaconFrost]

I may be wrong on this, but doesn't Vista support EFI systems, so that you could install Vista on a Macbook or something like that?

[BillLeeLee]

I may be wrong on this, but doesn't Vista support EFI systems, so that you could install Vista on a Macbook or something like that?

x64 versions of Vista will support EFI as of Service Pack 1, but you need a system with EFI 2.0 support to be able to install Vista with EFI. Apparently with a firmware update, or i f you have a really new Apple system, Apple systems support legacy BIOS instead of just EFI only.

I still have no idea what this Windows version of OSX stuff is talking about though.

[DeaconFrost]

Apparently, there's a hacked version of OSX floating around that skirts legality and will install on a PC natively.

Apple also has a version they won't discuss or release with the public that is meant to run on any PC on the market. I'd love to see that released to the public for sale, but that would kill all the huge profit they make on their hardware sales.

[Monkey God]

So for those who like vmware over vpc, why do you like it better?

[bob]

So for those who like vmware over vpc, why do you like it better?
Vmware runs on linux, and it doesnt have as many problems with linux/unix/bsd guest's. Once vmware-server is on linux, performance seems to improve quite a bit over what Vpc offered in windows.

OK...so here are some of the things that would be important to me.

1. Real-time (or very close to) machine performance in VM
Heh... Unless you are using xen para-virtualized, no.

Vmware, virtualpc and xen fully-virtualized both offer reasonable performance, in that its quick enough to where I can play counterstrike or something old, but its nowhere near what could be called close to the actual host-machine performance. Xen para-virtualized is probably the only one (aside from open-vz/KVM) that will offer near real-time speeds, but it doesnt work with many OS's.

Edit: I'll upload/post some benchmarks with unixbench and sandra sisoft, you can decide whether its "very close to machine performance".

[SpaceHonkey]

What does Windows have in *any* way, shape, or form, to OSX86?

(hint: it's nothing)

It doesn't and I didn't say it did. He asked about this mysterious OSX in the sky that doesn't require Apple hardware. That's it.

[compslckr]

I have used VM-ware and Parallels. My preference is parallels just because it works so nicely in osX.

[KevinO]

Another for virtualbox. I use it on Linux and it was easy to setup and get an XP install going. I have not tried it under Windows though, but if it was as easy to install under Linux the under Windows should be a breeze.

[xxEIEIOxx]

VirtualBox is not bad, the only shortcoming being that it doesn't support drag and drop between the host and guest system. The USB support is excellent. VMWare has nice features, but tends to be unstable and when it crashes, you lose all of your work. I also do not like their snapshot system. If you could merge them, it would be great. We use Microsoft Virtual PC at work on a daily basis, and it is very reliable. The undo disk feature is great. You can choose to merge your changes for the session, or just hit Alt + F4 and just close it and discard them all. Shortcoming is that there is no USB support except mouse and keyboard. Virtual PC and VirtualBox are both free. If VirtualBox would add drag and drop, I would use it exclusively.

[eeyrjmr]

virtualbox has a great feature on linux where you can merge desktop
so it is like you are running an app in yr desktop

[bealzz]

I use ESX server. Its awesome, 8x3Ghz, and 32 Gb of ram. currently running 20 servers like nothing

[Valnar]

My favorite is DOSBox. ;)

-Robert

[swatbat]

Personaly I like the MS products.

I would love to mess more with ESX but it is just too expensive.