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Review of Sun's Free Open Source Virtual Machine

Posted by timothy on from the expanding-options dept.

goombah99 writes "After snapping up virtualization company InnoTek at the beginning of the year, Sun has recently released VirtualBox as a fully functional and highly polished free GPL open source x86 Virtual Machine. It can host 32- or 64-bit Linux, Windows XP Vista and 98, OpenSolaris and DOS. It runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix platforms. The download is just 27MB. A review of it on MacWorld, showing HD movies playing inside windows XP on a mac, demonstrates performance visually indistinguishable from VMware. Like its competition, it can run other OSes in rootless, rooted, or seamless modes display modes (where all the applications have their windows mixed at the same time). Each VM instance can only run single core (though I/O is multi-core), and it does not yet support advanced windows graphics libraries however, so some gamers may be disappointed. Slashdot discussed the InnoTek acquisition earlier.

11 of 354 comments (clear)

  1. InnoTek? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Umm, yeah. Did you get the memo?

    1. Re:InnoTek? by goombah99 · · Score: 4, Funny

      No I'm over at Penitrode now. did the place burn down or something?

      --
      Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    2. Re:InnoTek? by discogravy · · Score: 3, Funny

      I hope not, they still have my stapler!

      --
      FreeBSD for the impatient.
    3. Re:InnoTek? by CnlPepper · · Score: 4, Funny

      root@SanityInAnarchy:~> modprobe -r pedantry
      root@SanityInAnarchy:~> modprobe humour

    4. Re:InnoTek? by SanityInAnarchy · · Score: 3, Funny

      E: Couldn't find package human-module-humor
      root@SanityInAnarchy:~# apt-get install fortunes-off

      Close enough.

      --
      Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
    5. Re:InnoTek? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Hey now. Don't jump to conclusions.

  2. Wow! by gazbo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Free, GPL AND open source? All in one package? However do they do it?!

  3. straight on to boing boing by davejenkins · · Score: 4, Funny

    So, can I run my xbox through it? I need to be able to run simultaneously:
    1) xbox halo
    2) mac for screen grabs and skype
    3) red hat terminals for server access
    4) windows for outlook and skype

    Plus, I need to be able to take screen grabs in any one of these virtual environments and save them into one or more of the others.

    Bonus points if it has 'arrange by penis' for the desktop environments.

    --

    davejenkins.com |

  4. Volume! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    They lose a little on each sale, but they make up for it in volume.

  5. Re:Mentions comparible speeds to VMware... by Zancarius · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm definitely going to have to try out the new version. Thank you for this link.

    --
    He who has no .plan has small finger. ~ Confucius on UNIX
  6. Re:Mentions comparible speeds to VMware... by jeremyp · · Score: 3, Funny

    Too late. It's happened.

    This shows that the moderation system sucks. The post is +5 informative and yet it's clearly false.

    --
    All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe