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Like ReactOS... it's a hobby project. A huge one with thousands of developers, but a hobby project.

You are greatly overestimating the number of contributors to ReactOS. They have 38 contributors with more than 100 commits and only 55 with more than 10.

The effort would be so much better off elsewhere (e.g. an open-source VMWare that does half what VMWare can do in terms of desktop integration!),

You mean like the open-source VirtualBox and QEmu?

But no virtual machine technology is going to solve our societies utter dependency on Windows. Take away Windows and everything grinds to a halt: no more loan at your bank because the software for that runs on Windows, half the ATMs down, gas pumps too, cashiers at a significant fraction of the supermarkets revert to paper, and in a number of states no election anymore, etc.

And yet there is only one supplier. That would be totally unimaginable for oil, steel or most other critical resources. That's what makes Wine important: it is the only alternative Windows API implementation.

https://download.virtualbox.or...

No more support for 32-bit host os.

And this fact is not mentioned anywhere. Stupid.

"- OS/2 Guest Additions: initial shared folder support "
ChangeLog: https://www.virtualbox.org/wik...

Read the PUEL. Again, not for commercial use unless you licensed it. I understand you want to ensure your Oracle stock does well, but the stock value isn't going to increase by spreading falsehoods or calling people liars.

I highly recommend not calling someone a liar unless you can show proof. Even with a four digit ID.

And it is even possible to keep the host off the Internet. Browsing the virtualbox forums a few months ago, I saw a good post on this. Googling I can't seem to find it right now, but I did find https://forums.virtualbox.org/...

why not just run Windows in VirtualBox

Because commercial use of the VirtualBox extension pack for more than 30 days requires paying $5,000 to One Rich American Called Larry Ellison. (This breaks down as $50 per user with a minimum order quantity of 100 users.) I'd be interested to read about your workarounds for the missing features of VirtualBox that are provided only by the extension pack.

or something

Three reasons. First, Linux + Wine uses less RAM than Linux + Windows would. If I end up thrashing swap despite having maxed out the RAM in my laptop, I'd have to buy a whole new laptop. Second, a Windows license costs $119.99. Third, Windows 10 snitches on users even when telemetry is set to basic, sending a list of all installed applications and device drivers to the mothership.

well, maybe saying it's just a frontend for kvm is a bit of an overstatement, but not by much - https://www.virtualbox.org/man...

I've always had problems with USB in VirtualBox on Linux

Have you tried the closed VirtualBox extension pack? Either go download them here (second bullet point), or if you use Ubuntu (like I do), just use the provided package that provides a downloader: "virtualbox-ext-pack".

No troll, just the facts relating to me.

It time for me to run Win7 as a VM OS (I can fresh install my Win7 as often as I want -on this computer, and my numbers don't go over ( those added for each upgrade). This with Linux Mint (cinnamon).

Did the research and Virtualbox was the software I went with as it met my every need https://www.virtualbox.org/. While it cost nothing up front, I'm into Oracle now.

Install VirtualBox and remember what Meat Loaf sang, "Two out of three ain't bad."

ReactOS offers a LiveCD and a regular Windows bootable install disk version,; either way it won't take you longer than 5 minutes to get to a usable desktop.

OS X El Capitan builds and runs as a guest under Virtual Box, although the "additions" don't work and you don't get sound (I've tried it, it works).

OS X as a guest is also fully supported by commercial products like Parallels Desktop 11 and VMware Fusion (for Mac).

As it stands, Virtualbox has no support for USB 3.0 ports. This is kind of a big deal, and I'm surprised no other comments have mentioned this. There is a bug report on the matter that is 3 years old, and all that has come out of it is the devs saying "We don't have the manpower to work on this" (understandable now) and one guy finding a workaround, that, by the way, doesn't seem to work universally--or at least not on my relatively new Dell laptop.

Virtualbox is completely unsuited for enterprise use, but it makes for a fine, simple, and relatively full-featured free VM solution for hobbyists, developers, or individual business workstations. But lack of USB 3.0 support is eventually going to kill off Virtualbox as more and more older computers are replaced with more recent models that don't have any USB 2.0 ports at all. (Many of those Windows VMs running on Linux or Linux VMs running on Windows won't be quite as useful without any way to access USB devices)

It's a shame, because there is nothing else in the free (gratis) category of virtualization software that offers as many features as Virtualbox does (snapshots, the ability to run multiple VMs at once, etc) and works equally well on Linux, OSX, and Windows.

Consider that it has the added overhead of having to handle locking, to prevent the host, or another VM, from stepping on the file while the guest has it, or vise-versa. Essentially, it's a host-only SMB-like implementation with a few added checks so that nobody can write or delete a file that's currently open elsewhere for read. SMB does something similar, but I believe the host can override that and write anyway.

Or, to put it another way, to the guest, the hosts folders aren't local. Likewise for the host, with regard to the guest's folders.

Come to think of it, it's actually quite dropbox-like in operation, and has performance to match as a result. But, hell, if you can do better, go right ahead.

4013 open bugs against VirtualBox. Some of which make VirtualBox unusable for huge userbases, like the inability to use USB 2.0 devices behind USB 3.0 host controllers.

How about you take a read through that list before getting back on your high horse?

If you think VirtualBox is "fine as-is", maybe you should try passing-through your USB 2.0 device that's plugged into your laptop which only has USB 3.0 host controllers. Guess what? It doesn't work because Virtual Box refuses to enumerate devices on USB 3.0 controllers. This bug has been outstanding for over 4 years.

Or maybe you want to use Windows 10 in a VM? Go right ahead! As long as you prefer your screen a pretty shade of blue. If you really think VirtualBox is "fine as-is", please post your IP address, because you're probably still running Windows XP.

@tlhIngan: "Oracle updated Vbox with a new release just 2 weeks ago"

@Phoronix: 'The v4.3 series has been receiving some maintenance updates during the last two years, but that's about it.'

"VirtualBox 4.3.20 (released 2014-11-21) | This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added: ref

4.3 brought major changes in the vt-x code for stability and performance improvements.

You should look at the change log and source code commits.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wik...
https://www.virtualbox.org/tim...

It wouldn't surprise me if 4.4 gets released soon with a new batch of improvements. 4.3 will then get put into maintenance mode and 4.4 because "unstable". I normally don't deploy the current branch in production for several releases as they fix the issues.

Project development is far from a standstill. I don't need any more flashly features. I hope they continue to focus on stability and performance issues.

4.3 brought major changes in the vt-x code for stability and performance improvements.

You should look at the change log and source code commits.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wik...
https://www.virtualbox.org/tim...

It wouldn't surprise me if 4.4 gets released soon with a new batch of improvements. 4.3 will then get put into maintenance mode and 4.4 because "unstable". I normally don't deploy the current branch in production for several releases as they fix the issues.

Project development is far from a standstill. I don't need any more flashly features. I hope they continue to focus on stability and performance issues.

As an experiment, how quickly can you find the appropriate file in which that simple change needs to be made?

https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/

For basic workstation stuff it's fine.

It's also pretty heavily used for development and test of server deploys. A lot of DevOps types are trying to use VirtualBox to build disposable test clusters for their applications, and has been the default and one of the best supported engines for vagrant.

Unfortunately, a lot of app footprints are starting to rely on deploying other "appliance VMs" in your VM (yo dawg), and VirtualBox is still straggling behind the others on implementing some form of nested VM capability. https://www.virtualbox.org/tic... So it's kinda getting to a point of having a large and growing number of server apps that you won't be able to use VirtualBox to set up a local development and test environment for things that involve, say, using a Stackato PAAS, or a FEO appliance, or an Apigee API gateway appliance, etc. to pick a bunch of essential pieces from recent memory. At least not without a lot of work to host those VMs directly on VirtualBox and not looking or working at all like they would when they hit production.

The list concentrated on money. EG sponsorship. This ignores contributions and resources directly contributing code.

http://intel-iscsi.sourceforge...
http://www.crunchbase.com/orga...
https://www.virtualbox.org/wik...
http://www.libreoffice.org/

Yes, Windows 10 is bringing the classic desktop back, but it seems that it is becoming a unelegant mishmash of Modern UI widgets and classic Windows widgets.

Anyone can try Windows 10 for themselves if they have a spare box or can run Virtual Box. So far, "unelegant mishmash" is about right. Modern Apps seem like an emulation mode that intrudes on the desktop from time to time, even after taking steps to avoid them.
There's a lot of user feedback about improving the desktop over Modern-izing everything. All I want out of a new Windows is a better Windows 7, like performance improvements, bug fixes, a programming API that doesn't drive people insane, and more customizability (Windows 8, 8.1, and 10 are all less customizable than 7). But you get the feeling nobody at Microsoft wants to work on that old crufty Windows code and would rather plug on something all new - and bundling it with Windows is going to convince you to like it. At least the Preview Program gives you a chance to yell about it until it's released.

Here's the fix.

Go get a copy of Windows 3.1 on eBay and run it in your favorite VM. Google finds guides to install Windows 3.1 in DOSBox and in VirtualBox.

I'm keeping an old netbook going, with the wifi turned off and the ethernet port unconnected.

There's a better way.

Free, kinda. Open, a bit... But if you are a large company, not at all. And if you submit code, you assign it all to them.

https://www.virtualbox.org/wik...

It's almost like someone needs to make an open source VM that can run under any OS. After all if you're upgrading from XP you clearly already have the XP licence to run in the VM, you don't need to rely on the Windows 7 licence to offer you XP support.

Virtualbox

Guess I will have to hire someone else then.

It is not like there are free VM's to use nor are there free virtualizers available.

To say no to the world's most popular browser and letting your customers give a leg up to the competition whose site works just fine for their customers is inexcusably. It is not like IE 9+ is not standards compliant or anything.

I see many who claim NO IE EVER!!! .. also make websites that only work with -webkit CSS extensions and viewed best with Chrome, yet bash IE 6?!

VM is Virtual Machine. Go here for a start https://www.virtualbox.org/

I ... wish VMWare clients were cheaper.

These are.

Does it even need to be said anymore when it applies to commercial products?

Even the open source ones?

Experimental support for UEFI-Boot (DVD: 32 and 64bit, CD: only 32bit) after installation on USB flash disk.

In order to create a bootable USB-medium (memory flashdisk, SD-card, digital camera with USB connector, cellphone with microSD, ...), the program flash-knoppix can be started from a running Knoppix system. This program installs all needed Knoppix files onto the FAT-formatted flashdisk, and creates a boot record for it. If desired, the target medium can be partitioned and fornatted, or left in its inistal state, so that existing files stay intact. The KNOPPIX Live System starts and runs about factor 5 faster from USB flash disk than from CD or DVD!

It looks like you have to get a Knoppix system running first before you create the thumb drive, but with your Mac all that requires is a little time with Virtual Box (or equivalent). Give it a try and post the results!

VirtualBox provides the VBoxManage tool for automating operations. It works perfectly fine for this sort of thing. One of my small servers at home is running 28 VMs with all management happening through the command line, and that hasn't even gotten close to whatever the upper limit is. You certainly can run a classroom worth of VMs on a modestly sized box.

The only major management feature that's much easier on VMWare than VirtualBox is moving VMs to new systems. That is very useful for large production VM deployments, but it doesn't sound necessary for this situation.

I use VirtualBox because there is an open source release that works across multiple platforms. VMWare is all closed, and Xen only works on UNIX-ish systems. Students in particular can benefit from running a VM copy of Linux on another host OS, because it provides a way to get familiar with the software on either a Windows or Mac laptop (which they probably own already). That requirement rules out Xen as a good example. And if you're going to introduce students to open source software via Linux, it's nice if you can present that lesson on an open source stack too.

Two words: seamless mode

Done,

install this:
virtualbox.org

boot an image from here:
android-x86.org

So much for chinese engineering...

In the last year or so support for 3d acceleration inside a vm has been possible.

Virtual box states that it has opengl and dirext3d 8/9 support in it's release notes.
http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-video

I have not needed to use it so I am not sure how it performs.

For a beginner I would say Virtual Box. It is open sourced - GPL version 2 compliant licensing. The hypervisor is software based - so runs as an app on your existing machine; this also means you have the flexibility of turning it off - and regaining full resources for your host operating system if/when you need it (e.g. if you play high performance video games or other processing/ram intensive activities).

It allows you to manage most of the functionality of a normal virtual environment including virtual network connections, allocation of resources to VMs and so on. It supports a large number of guest OSs to varying degrees of fidelity.

Finally - I found it to be easy to install and use compared to other virtual environments.

After you've played with Virtual Box for some time and want to do something more serious on the server side - I would advise using AMD processor based systems with lots of RAM and harddrive space [or network attached storage], and upgrading to bare metal hypervisors such as KVM or VMWare.

For a beginner I would say Virtual Box. It is open sourced - GPL version 2 compliant licensing. The hypervisor is software based - so runs as an app on your existing machine; this also means you have the flexibility of turning it off - and regaining full resources for your host operating system if/when you need it (e.g. if you play high performance video games or other processing/ram intensive activities).

It allows you to manage most of the functionality of a normal virtual environment including virtual network connections, allocation of resources to VMs and so on. It supports a large number of guest OSs to varying degrees of fidelity.

Finally - I found it to be easy to install and use compared to other virtual environments.

After you've played with Virtual Box for some time and want to do something more serious on the server side - I would advise using AMD processor based systems with lots of RAM and harddrive space [or network attached storage], and upgrading to bare metal hypervisors such as KVM or VMWare.

Actually VMWare, Parallels and VirtualBox all have hardware-accelerated graphics modes. eg a trivial Google search to check the facts would have netted you this: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch04.html#guestadd-video

You are right that no recent game will run well with software rendering (old games like those in MAME are ok though). You are wrong that VM environments only have software rendering. VMs are generally great for intense GPU, CPU and network use, they just suck really bad for disk I/O (so don't virtualize your database server if you have a decent DB workload).

Before you give in, I highly highly suggest you try virtualizing windows on a working (ideally multi-core) Linux box with Oracle's VirtualBox.

It's completely free, frequently updated, allows control of everything, including number of processors and RAM to dedicate to the virtual environment, and the only exception is the lack of support for discrete hardware graphics acceleration (But for now should be OK for the games he wants to play).

A pre-release version of Windows 8 can be legally downloaded on microsoft.com. Then if you don't want to change your configuration, you can install it inside Virtual Box. You may want to exorcise your computer after that.

Not yet:

https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/7702

But there's no reason it can't.

I can't disagree strongly enough. For the average user, Linux is still awful as far as "usability" goes. While it's fine for us power-geeks, telling someone they have to write a .desktop file in a particular format in superuser mode in order to create a shortcut for an application which won't otherwise pin to the Ubuntu launcher - for example - is a joke.

It's as simple as this: if the average user needs to use the console EVER, the OS is not ready for the general public. That's not to say if someone wants to do something abnormal they shouldn't have to use the console, however short of using pre-packaged software complete with desktop shortcuts on most distributions, a user is going to need to at some point drop into bash and do something which current usability guidelines are well beyond.

The counter that we used to all get by fine with console-based or text-only OSs is a moot point. We've progressed beyond those because there are superior, easier ways to work, using technology that simply wasn't available in the past. We used to ride horses everywhere but then the car was invented and we had a superior way to travel. While hobbyists can still go ride a horse if they want to, it's clearly inferior in the majority of situations the average citizen will encounter. Because we don't need text interfaces for the vast majority of purposes anymore, the general user is not instructed in their use - nor should have to be.

If you have to read a man page in order to discover how to use a piece of software, that software is flawed, and fails at usability for the general populace. It's form and function should be largely self-evident. By all means, any specialist may find a command-line encoder which you can parse batches of files to with a convoluted string vastly superior for their particular usage. These individuals do not represent the majority of users.

As far as people having no trouble making their software "just work" on Linux, take https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads as an example. One link for 32bit & 64bit Windows. One link for 32bit & 64bit MacOS X. For Linux however, a wiki page, 45 initial links for various Linux flavors, sudo instructions for adjusting your repository so existing Debians installs can download the latest versions, sudo instructions for fixing invalid signatures in your existing repository, and sudo instructions for verifying the signed key for Debian and RPM installs (something that is as simple as a right-click in Windows).

Lets be clear.. it's a huge amount of trouble to make software "just work" on Linux. Some publishers simply hook into wine libraries and give you the Windows software with a few path redirects and, in some shocking cases, privilege elevations. But that's not making it work on Linux. That's making it work through Wine. Producing new software for Linux beyond text-only applications, which "just work" in a wide variety of flavors is an incredible amount of work. It's far easier to port a graphical application to Mac OSX and have it work on all flavors of Mac OSX than it is to port to Linux and work on all flavors of Linux.

To address another claim of yours - Windows needs more maintenance and Linux less? What? Again - presuming you're talking about your average home desktop user (this is a thread about Steam, after all - we're not looking at enterprise applications here), this couldn't be further from the truth. Windows 7 requires virtually no user maintenance whatsoever. It updates and patches silently. Patches do come more frequently, largely due to expectations of professionals - this is a good thing, not bad. However, what it does on its own is not "maintenance" as far as any user is concerned.

Linux on the otherhand - take Ubuntu again, the most popular general-user GUI for the OS. You want automatic patch updates? First of all you've got to install that package, manually. Then you've got to edit /etc/ap

Other VMs had source leaks, too.

Xen had a source leak.
Virtualbox had a source leak.
Even KVM had a source leak.

These VM people better get their act together!

Speaking of which, what's a good CPU for a developer laptop (functioning as a desktop replacement)?

I was thinking I needed to have at least a Core i3 because it supports Intel Virtualization Extensions (VT-x). But then I read that VirtualBox doesn't really use hardware virtualization much. So even a Dual Core B940 should suffice, right?

Of course, in the day, we all had Pentium 4's, and today's processors are all many times faster than that.

(I'm not compiling C++ or even Java most of the time.)

    VirtualBox has a "teleport" function. It's CLI, not GUI.

    If you're using a small setup, that uses local storage, you'll have to take it down, copy it over, and bring it back up on the new server. On any of them, that will be required to adjust load. If one VM gets real busy, you'll want to move it over to a host with less activity on it. That, or move others away from it.

    I have a small environment of a couple dozen VMs using VirtualBox. It takes less time to move a VM to another host, than it would have to move a physical server between racks. :)

VirtualBox does now support live migration as of version 3.1 via it's "Teleporting" feature.

Does the laptop have USB 3.0? If so use some free virtualization software (I like VirtualBox) and keep the VM hard disk file on external storage. I haven't had much luck running a VM off of USB 2.0 storage, but 3.0 should provide enough throughput for satisfactory performance. Depending on your job, use of virtualization software might not even raise any suspicions. I use multiple VMs to create an entire testing development on my one machine.

Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.

How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?

Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.

Falcon

You obviously didn't understand what I was talking about *at all*. You mentioned VirtualBox, Fusion 4, and Parallels. Try running OS X in VirtualBox or Parallels without using a hacked up OSx86 version. Oh wait you can't. Try virtualizing more than two instances of OS X on the same server by any method without violating the EULA. Oh wait you can't. Try doing anything remotely useful with OS X and virtualization, the single most important and transformative technology in the IT world today. Oh wait you can't.

In response to my asking about terminal services, you respond "OSX has terminal". Clearly you have no idea what I'm talking about and didn't even bother to do the five seconds of googling to find out. Terminal services refers to the ability to have one server host multiple remote login gui sessions, each with their own desktop and user settings. I refrained from calling it "Remote Desktop", because you'd probably come back with Apple Remote Desktop, misunderstanding the conversation yet again. ARD is just VNC with a few bells and whistles thrown in.

Now tell me what you can do with MS Windows and or Linux you can't do with a Mac.

How about virtualization? How about terminal services? How about configuration management?

Virtualizing? Let's see. There'e VirtualBox, VMWare's Fusion 4, and Parallels. I don't have it setup right now but I'm going to try to use VirtualBox so I can run my dualboot Ubuntu installation in a virtual machine while running OSX. If that does not work then I'll try Fusion 4. OSX has terminal. Being based on FreeBSD many of the commands are the same as in Linux. Look at that, there's even Open Source configuration management software that runs on OSX.

Falcon