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Virtualbox Goes OSS

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the cut-a-hole-in-the-box dept.

paltemalte writes to tell us that VirtualBox has gone open source. InnoTek released their virtualization product as open source and launched virtualbox.org to help cultivate the community and allow further development of the software.

4 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Destroying your server in 4 easy steps. by Virak · · Score: 4, Funny

    1. Use full-sized images scaled down with HTML as thumbnails on your screenshot page, rather than real thumbnails.
    2. Get your site posted on Slashdot.
    3. ???
    4. PROFIT! (For your web host, at least)

  2. Someone needs to explain bittorrent to them by symbolset · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From their download page:
    * Note: Even though we provide BitTorrents to allow for easier downloads, we do not currently permit redistribution of the VirtualBox binaries above. See the Licensing FAQ for details. This restriction does not, of course, apply to the Open Source Edition (OSE) below.

    Obviously the don't quite get how bittorrent works.

    --
    Help stamp out iliturcy.
  3. Re:Can Linux Virtualization Get Any More Fragmente by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    That's a little unfair. That list represents a wide range of technologies out there, from full virtualization to full emulation, of complete OSes or particular software, and with a spot of OS porting and machine language translation on the side.

    Which you use depends on what you want to do - if you're in hosting, Xen, KVM, VMWare, vservers or OpenVZ is probably what you're after. If you're wanting to test software on several OSes, VMWare is probably where it's at, though Xen and probably KVM will serve too. If your OS of choice doesn't run on your hardware, you'll need an emulator like QEmu. Kernel hackers will probably use UML, Qemu or Bochs, whereas those who wish to use windows apps under linux might try Xen, KVM, QEmu, VMWare, Wine, Win4Lin or Cedega depending on various factors.

    Various levels of hardware support are also represented. Xen will get you near-native performance, but you'll need an x86 that explicitly supports full virtualization or an OS that's been recompiled for paravirtualization. QEmu, on the other hand, will let you run windows on a powerpc mac, albeit more slowly.

    So, although there's a lot of choice out there, which one you'd actually use depends a lot on what hardware you've got, what OS or progam you want to run, whether you want to use Office, play games, run a variety of OSes or many instances of one, and what's the fastest technique for your particular combination. There's a lot going on, and it's not just about running windows under linux or vice versa.

  4. Trying it now... by Cicero382 · · Score: 4, Informative

    I have to admit I hadn't heard of this before, so I thought I'd give a go (with the XP binary download).

    Bloody hell! It not only seems to work, it looks pretty fast as well. I'm installing a Fedora 6 on it (hosted on Win XP) as I type. I use VMware (licenced) on other systems and I use VMWare Player on this one (Dell XP thingy) and, so far, VB has impressed me.

    The user interface seems to be better thought out than I've encountered in the past (I especially like the ability to blow a virtual machine completely away with little effort) - VMWare, take note.

    I'll post again when I've given this instance a bit of a hammering - you know; IP stack handling, cpu loading etc.

    Give it a try - it can't hurt. AND their site hasn't shown signs of being slashdotted (err... yet).

    Oh, yeah! One last thing. Will those who are whinging about the differences about the binary version and the source version please do two things:

    1. Read what they *actually* say about the two versions.
    2. STFU!!

    I thank you.