Ask Slashdot: Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner?

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Ask Slashdot: Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner?

Posted by Soulskill on Friday November 9, 2012 @11:27AM from the not-the-holodeck dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I am getting ready to start learning the use of virtual machines. What VM software would you recommend? This is for personal use. It would be good to run both Windows VMs and Linux VMs. Early use would be maintaining multiple Windows installs using only one desktop computer with plenty of cores and memory. I would be starting with a Windows host, but probably later switching to a Linux host after I learn more about it. Free is good, but reliability and ease of use are better. What is your preferred choice for a VM beginner? VMware? Xen? VirtualBox? Something else?" It may also be helpful if you can recommend particular VM software for particular uses, or provide some insight on different hosting options.

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Really. by Andy+Prough · 2012-11-09 11:50 · Score: 5, Funny

How dare someone ask a software preference question on /. Doesn't he know this is a politics/religion website?
1. Re:Really. by rrohbeck · 2012-11-09 17:16 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  "Software preference" clearly falls under "politics/religion"!
  Only Emacs.
  Preferring Vim is 100% rational.
  (Ducks...)
  
  --
  thegodmovie.com - watch it
Re:What the fuck by Tim12s · 2012-11-09 11:53 · Score: 5, Funny

Apparently the attention span of the average geek has dropped below 130 to approx 95. Instead of showing us a machine running VMWare inside Xen inside Virtualbox on Linux inside HTML5 Linux emulator.... we are now succumbed to trivial what-if scenarios. What type of dog food should I feed my dog? blah blah blah ... Feed you dog cat flavoured dogfood, c'mon think!
NOT VirtualBox by Dan+East · 2012-11-09 11:55 · Score: 4, Funny

This negative comment was necessary to counterbalance the huge number of positive comments that are recommending VirtualBox. It's a yin-yang thing.

--
Better known as 318230.
As always, Betteridge has the answer. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-09 12:19 · Score: 5, Funny

Which Virtual Machine Software For a Beginner?
No.
Re:What the fuck by Anonymous Coward · 2012-11-09 13:15 · Score: 5, Funny

Can someone read this guy's post to me, or at the very least, summarize it? It's too long!
Re:VMware is very easy by DeathElk · 2012-11-09 21:35 · Score: 3, Funny

Gentoo? We want him to learn, not commit suicide!