VirtualBox 4.3 Comes With New Multi-Touch Support, Virtual Cam and More

donadony writes "Oracle announced the release of VirtualBox 4.3; this is a major release that comes with important new features, devices support and improvements. According to the announcement, 'Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.3 adds a unique virtual multi-touch interface to support touch-based operating systems, and other new virtual devices and utilities, including webcam devices and a session recording facility. This release also builds on previous releases with support for the latest Microsoft, Apple, Linux and Oracle Solaris operating systems, new virtual devices, and improved networking functionality.'"

Comments

What are the current options?

[gstoddart]

OK, somewhat related question ... what are the current workable options for virtualization?

I've used VMWare at home for years. Virtual box, being Oracle, isn't necessarily something I'm interested in.

Anybody got a link to something which covers the current state of virtualization stuff suitable for home use?

Re:What are the current options?

[war4peace]

I never judge products based on who builds them. To me, software is like art. It doesn't matter whether the author was a drunk homosexual, all I care is whether the product has value.

Re:What are the current options?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with being a drunk homosexual?

Re:What are the current options?

[DeathToBill]

Your keyboard and mouse do not require USB 2.0 to work. For two reasons: 1. Most keyboards and mice do not have bandwidth requirements that justify USB2. Almost every keyboard and mouse out there is USB1. 2. VirtualBox does not use the keyboard and mouse as USB devices directly. You install a virtual keyboard and mouse driver which redirects events from the host operating system. Otherwise you'd have to have a separate keyboard and mouse for the host and guest operating systems.

Re:What are the current options?

[fast turtle]

The only problem with Virtual PC is it doesn't support anything older then XP unless you have a copy of Virtual PC 2007. That's the version that still supports Win98 with working sound. I've got a copy and refuse to give it up as it's the only option for those win95 apps that simply do not work in Win7 - the damn things tend to do some very screwy things and a VM instance is the safest way to run em.

Re:What are the current options?

[DeathToBill]

For cross-platform desktop virtualisation, your options are:

VMWare Server - free but essentially abandoned by VMWare. Requires ancient versions of web browsers to work.
VMWare Player - free but only for non-commercial use. No snapshotting. I've found the console interaction randomly buggy.
VMWare Workstation - full-featured. Currently quoting £190 per seat.
VMWare vSphere / ESXi - bare-metal virtualisation. Not free and not really suitable for desktop virtualisation.
VirtualBox - free and fairly full-featured. If you want to use USB2 or boot it from a network drive then you need an add-on pack from Oracle. This is free for 'individual' use which Oracle defines to include single users installing it for commercial purposes but not having it installed by IT admin.

If you're happy running on Windows then Hyper-V might be an option. It comes in bare-metal or Windows-hosted variants. Supports most operating systems as guests.
Or VirtualPC might be an option. It only 'supports' Windows guests but says that "you can install most x86-based operating systems" as well.

Xen might be an option. It's a bare-metal hypervisor that runs Linux as a management environment and can run any x86 operating system as a guest. I've not used it. This sounds attractive, but keep in mind it imposes some limitations, too - you probably can't keep the disk for one operating system as a file in the host operating system and copy it around at will, for instance. A bare-metal hypervisor requires that the guest disks all be physical devices, as though the guest OS was running on the bare metal. So when you want to add a new OS, you either need to have thought ahead and left some space unpartitioned on your disk, or you need to add more disk. Even something like Wubi won't work if you plan to run Windows and Linux side-by-side.

Personally I use VirtualBox and it does alright.

Re:What are the current options?

[PerfectionLost]

What's wrong with being a drunk homosexual?

I know right? Unless he is making the comment that Larry Ellison is a drunk homosexual, which is probably more offensive to drunk homosexuals.

USB support still sucks though

[AmiMoJo]

USB support, at least with Windows hosts, still seems to be broken though. It just never, ever seems to work, or at best once and then never again. That made me switch to VM Ware a while back.

Re:why is this product still viable?

[OzPeter]

use LXC (Linux containers) or KVM or OpenVZ instead. Remember, this is the same company that killed solaris, pissed on RHEL, and shit all over the idea of open source recently. Now its trying to turn a buck on an open source product?

None of those solutions run on anything other than a linux based system. So how do you propose I run my VM's on Windows and OSX? And please don't tell me that I can move to Linux .. it ain't going to happen due to all the OS specific software that I am using as a part of my work.

Re:why is this product still viable?

[Gothmolly]

You know if you have OS specific software that you need for work, there's a solution for that...

Re:Hmm

[hodet]

Does it even need to be said anymore when it applies to commercial products? Not to be the guy with the tinfoil had or anything, but given that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo etc etc have cooperated with the NSA (not much choice) why would Oracle not also be a part of that? I will still use VBox for my little uninteresting personal needs. Maybe a nice Hi NSA motd or desktop wallpaper.

Virtual touch?

[camperdave]

Virtual touch? How is that supposed to work? Do you get drop down menu with a list of all of the gestures, or do you get a hand icon that you click and swipe with the mouse?

Re:Hmm

[contrapunctus]

But does it come with the ask toolbar?