Slashdot Mirror
VirtualBox Development At a Standstill
jones_supa writes: Phoronix notes how it has been a long time since last hearing of any major innovations or improvements to VirtualBox, the virtual machine software managed by Oracle. This comes while VMware is improving its products on all platforms, and KVM, Xen, Virt-Manager, and related Linux virtualization technologies continue to advance as well. Is there any hope left for a revitalized VirtualBox? It has been said that there are only four paid developers left on the VirtualBox team at the company, which is not enough manpower to significantly advance such a complex piece of software. The v4.3 series has been receiving some maintenance updates during the last two years, but that's about it.
Legitimate question. I like VirtualBox and have used it for a long time, but as the summary said there are good alternatives available which are improving. As far as I know the only real "killer" feature of virtualBox is its OpenGL acceleration, and we'll probably see that in KVM and friends soon enough. Besides that, VirtualBox basically does what it's supposed to do at this point. Even if it stands still, it'll still be useful for awhile (I know I find no compelling reason to switch right now).
Are there some other core VirtualBox features I'm not aware of that keep people pinned to it? If not, I say let it stagnate and eventually be replaced.
Where software goes to die
are you unaware that the majority of it is open source? Therefore there's far more than 4 people looking at the code
I really like VirtualBox
don't fix it. I mean sure I'd like more features and stuff, but it works out of the box. No tweaking (other than to guest vm's) or anything necessary. It just works. Sure there are other (paid) alternatives out there but VirtualBox does it's job well for me.
VirtualBox meets pretty much any need I have for a type-2 hypervisor as-is. It runs on the 3 big software platforms, so migrating images across any type of server is trivial. Combined with the phpVirtualBox web config front-end, it's an easy-to-deploy, very stable Type 2 hypervisor with all the major features one would expect. It's not suited for all virtualization needs, but it's a solid piece of software.
Frankly, I'd rather have it be stable and receive security updates than constantly rolling in new whiz-bang features with dubious use and potential new security problems.
Just a few developers doesn't have to be a problem, that just means it's slow going. Slow pace of new features doesn't need to be a problem either. Emulating the pile of crap full of historic mismanagement that is "x86(_64)" is of course going to be horribly complex, but perhaps refactoring could do some good. Keeping the thing working needs to be a priority if it is to remain usable. That they're not very good at, as some ostensibly minor releases have seen rather involved changes of default. That is a problem. Also a problem is that the people working on it evidently have no feeling whatsoever with "CLI" and manage to come up with something horribly clunky. The GUI is a lot easier to use, except when you can't, like no display server handy or the network path not being quite fast enough to support remote displaying, or where the point was to automate tasks by scripting. But that already tells us where the developers come from. This effectively limits virtualbox to the desktop.
This in turn raises the question, just where does oracle want to take virtualbox? Does it even want to compete with other offerings? From there you can wonder just what improvements would be needed. Quite possible that the current pace and direction is exactly what oracle envisions.
Who in their right mind would willingly submit to anything from Oracle? Have you ever been audited by them? Horrible company. They have some great products, but the company itself is a nasty evil entity that thinking people avoid like the plague unless they have absolutely no other choice.
Newer versions do not work with a Windows 10 host. But if you revert back to 4.3.12 everything works great. Seems like the dev team needs to be more careful about breaking changes.I know Windows 10 is not a released product yet but it rocks and is stable so I use it.
After struggling with VirtualBox for a while, I broke down and bought VMWare. I use it for running Linux and running other versions of MacOS X on my Mac. I have found it to be well worth the money. In general, I like free software and I don't mind something that is a little harder to use if the non-free alternative is expensive, but at $79 VM Ware has saved me so much time its well worth it.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
After looking at the release history, I don't see any changes in frequency of releases / updates.
https://www.virtualbox.org/pipermail/vbox-announce/
Add in test builds available showing future bits...
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Testbuilds
Since Oracle spreads it's virtualization bits between products, talking about only VirtualBox paints an incomplete picture.
VirtualBox is akin to VMWare Workstation.
OVM SPARC / x64 is akin to VMWare vSphere (or whatever name they've selected this week).
VirtualBox coupled with kernel-zones and OVM (LDOMs) baked into the SPARC hardware and OVM for x86/x64 platforms - the entire gamut is covered.
Sorry, but Phoronix did not paint a complete picture. How much did they get from EMC for spreading FUD?
I just bought a fancy new computer with windows 8. I like to use virtualbox since I get to have linux back without losing driver support (no, my computer is not fully supported by linux), and also in a way that one has multiple desktops. I have multiple desktops, it's just that each one is a separate virtualmachine, so I can save and load state whenever I feel like it, and I can reboot my computer without losing what's open.
I had to invest a certain amount of time learning about virtualbox, learning how to configure it, learning how I like to manage each virtual install. Now I feel like I'm wasting my time. Am I? Should I switch to vmware? I know I'm succumbing to FUD, but, well, I dunno
And herp derp, which vmware is the free, use-it-on-my-personal-computer version? There are like 50 products listed at vmware.com
I use VirtualBox for my application server and half a dozen thin clients, clustering, a virtualised (and very scalable thanks you) multitudinous WAMP stack, and game cabinet imaging development. It does exactly what I want it to do, I see absolutely no reason to change to another system. If development stopped HARD today it would not bother me in the slightest. I don't know of any features other platforms have that Virtualbox doesn't that I've ever gone "Oh, why can't I do this!?"
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It has problems with OS X guests. It had no problem with 10.9, but for 10.10, it gets stuck at 3MB of video memory, no matter what you set in the VM preferences.
So, I guess no support for USB 3.0 controllers.
I user VirtualBox all day every day for fairly complex tasks, and it has performed admirably, yet it is sorely in need of QA help. Major releases happen with auto-update notifications and then you realize that your old snapshots can't be started, using a debugger blows up the VM, sometimes snapshots don't save properly even though it looks like they did, etc. etc. Then you have to dig out the last working version, which came out 6 months back, to get up and running again.
Aside from this "upgrade gamble", which I put squarely on a lack of beta releases, VirtualBox is fantastic. Hardware accelerated graphics with full Aero support, fast virtualization, shared clipboard and files, attaching USB devices - it's everything you need in a friendly UI that anyone can work with.
It'll be a tragedy IMO if it's left to rot.
For anyone interested, I find the last stable version to be 4.3.12 (on Windows).
Wiki says that virtualbox is Gnu GPL2. If Oracle has abandoned, fork it?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Funny enough, Oracle updated Vbox with a new release just 2 weeks ago. That doesn't say "standstill" to be, but more "stable and fixing bugs".
Yeah, so what if they're not making big new feature requests? They're still supporting it with updates and bug fixes, and that's a sign of a mature stable product.
That company ruins everything it touches.
Look what happened to MySQL, leading to the need to fork to MariaDB.
Look what happened to ZFS; as soon as Oracle got its grubby mitts on it, it closed-sourced all future updates and made it incompatible with the open source version.
Do you use Solaris? If you do, I don't even have to write anything here. Support has gone absolutely to shit since the acquisition.
And now Virtualbox is stagnant and uncared for.
Why is anyone surprised? Oracle bought Sun and ruined everything awesome about the company. It was the absolute worst possible company that could have acquired Sun, and it shows in every way.
Fuck you, Oracle. With a turbo-charged chainsaw, sideways.
I use VitualBox every day to run Adobe CS6 (and occasionally MS Office) on a Win7 guest on a Linux host.
I've also helped a friend set up a similar config to run stuff like iTunes, again on a Win7 guest / Linux host combo.
VirtualBox does exactly what it says on the tin, for us at least: the current situation with VirtualBox suits us very well. And I'm seriously grateful for that!
Anone who has released a product like VSA should be drawn an quatered and never allowed near a computer again...
The Windows binaries have been broken after 4.3.12, anyway. Oracle insisted on pushing some kind of "security" enhancements that totally borked the whole package. They blame it on invalid DLL signing, and have basically told Microsoft that they need to recompile core packages to be compliant with Virtualbox's new standards... yeah, guess who will win that pissing contest. Rumor has it there was a 4.3.13 fork that ripped out the enhancements, but Oracle squashed that shit right good, and it's nowhere to be found.
So, yeah... good riddance to bad software.
It's sad to say, but I have come to the conclusion that the solution to VirtualBox is VMWare. I along with other people have opened a bug case regarding Bridged Adapters on the latest version effecting the Linux and Windows install. It has been over a month and the issue has not even been looked at. Every time I open a
VM with bridged adapters I get the following error on both Linux and Windows hots.
Failed to open a session for the virtual machine Kali.
Failed to open/create the internal network 'HostInterfaceNetworking-Intel(R) 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection' (VERR_INTNET_FLT_IF_NOT_FOUND).
Failed to attach the network LUN (VERR_INTNET_FLT_IF_NOT_FOUND).
Result Code: E_FAIL (0x80004005)
Component: Console
Interface: IConsole {8ab7c520-2442-4b66-8d74-4ff1e195d2b6}
I've been using VirtualBox extensively as I've been taking some Linux classes at the local community college in an effort to brush up on my skills. I've found VB to be a great way to test out new Windws OS's and applications, and the BSD's as well. It would be a shame for this great, FREE, product to die. Sure, I have access to ESXi, and I could go out and buy VM Workstation, but VB does everything I need it to do. It can be a little difficult finding solutions to issues I have (such as multi-monitor support and screen resolutions, BSD wierdness, etc.) and could defintiely be better supported, but as another post pointed out, Oracle is the place where great software goes to die a lingering death...
Nothing to see here but us trolls...move along...
VirtualBox suffers from some of the same problems of other commercial proprietary software. While we think of VirtualBox as being "open source" it really isn't free software. There were releases that were free software, but its reverted to being dependent on non-free components and there is no effort to fix that. There was an outright refusal. Probably due to Oracle's stripping of its development team.
However even before this VirtualBox suffered from poor code quality. The developers refused to clean up the code which is one of the reasons its been such a pain to use. While you may think it is the easiest virtual emulation software available its only true at one level. Due to poor code quality the kernel-level module was refused from the mainline kernel. Which means its a pain to maintain support for. Users who upgrade from one version to another may find it stops working. Hacks are in place to keep it working in many distributions, but they're not always installed by default, etc.
The sad fact is while it was the most user friendly partly free solution we had for a while I'll be glad to see a true free software alternative eclipse it that properly integrates with the mainline kernel and isn't such a PITA to maintain or keep working from a development, packaging, and even end-user support perspective.
Looking at the change log seems like there's a release full of fixes every few months. Seems active to me. I'm not sure how big the market is for paid users of the product, maybe Oracle isn't getting enough income from it to push them to promote and invest in major new functionality? I don't personally know anyone paying for it, everyone seems to use VirtualBox when they need something free (or for personal user), and corp use seems to all be VMWare, at least enterprises I've worked at.
Since I have a ZFS server, running on solaris, this is the only option for that box.
With MS including Hyper-V in all versions of windows at no extra charge, I've switched over to that for all my virtualization needs. They make it seamless to go from dev on your workstation to prod cluster. Not even VmWare does that (issues with hardware versions and other "shadow" annoyances).
Is it possible to create a USB stick bootable virtualbox with persistent storage on the USB device?
Performance of USB3 sticks is more than adequate and this might be a way to create a way to create a single stick that could run multiple operating systems from bootup without needing any host storage.
I made a go at rolling my own with Ubuntu, but because I trying to do it with an older version of VMware workstation running under Windows it seemed to hose up on the USB stick installation.
I tried finding a canned image for dumping onto a USB stick, but couldn't find one.
There might be too many gotchas in terms of hardware drivers for the host Linux environment, but it seemed like a sweet solution if would work.
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.
Vitualization is a huge opportunity for Microsoft. If I were Satya Nadella I'd put a small army of developers on visualization and make Windows the first choice for hosting everything else, and I'd include it in the usual business licenses of Windows.
Virtualbox is "ok." GPU acceleration works, but API support is very limited; OpenGL 2.0... quite old now. You can't use modern versions of GLSL with it. And VMware workstation (and "player") isn't any better, just less flaky. Parallels is a little better at OpenGL 2.1. I actually use both vbox and player to run some GUI development tools in Ubuntu hosted on Windows.
Microsoft could use its pull with hardware vendors to work the kinks out of GPU virtualization and solve this problem for real. I dream of a fully virtualized desktop environment where one can run whatever one wants without compromise, much like servers have with today's powerful hypervisors. Microsoft could build that.
AC because haters.
I use it every day at work. We support multiple sites and so having multiple windows VMs on my corporate windows laptop allows me to be VPN'ed (using a mix of VPN clients) into multiple sites as well as into corporate at the same time. I mostly now use W7 VM's, but I still also have 5gb sized XP based VM's that run with only 192MB memory allocated per VM which makes it easy run lots of these as well as being easy to back up and use on other systems. All the VM's have the tools I need for any of the sites I may connect to.
AFAIK, there isn't any other free alternative for Windows systems, and since the company won't pay for VMWare It works well for me.
No, because VirtualBox requires an OS to run on. It's not a Hypervisor.
No, because VirtualBox requires an OS to run on. It's not a Hypervisor.
Sorry, meant to say BARE METAL (type-1) hypervisor. It technically is a type-2 (hosted) hypervisor.
Yeah, no shit Sherlock, which is why I tried to install it under and Ubuntu as the host OS installed to a USB stick.
"opensource" it or at least some of it.
Performance of USB3 sticks is more than adequate and this might be a way to create a way to create a single stick that could run multiple operating systems from bootup without needing any host storage.
You can just write a filesystem to a USB device, or you can partition it and write to it like it was an HDD. So putting multiple operating systems on a USB stick has always been not just possible, but trivial; you do it just the same way as you do it on a HDD.
I made a go at rolling my own with Ubuntu, but because I trying to do it with an older version of VMware workstation running under Windows it seemed to hose up on the USB stick installation.
Get vmware player and the gparted CD ISO, and you will have all that you need to accomplish your goal. ;) Make sure to set the boot order before installing anything because it's much easier to get into the BIOS then. Can't you point VBox at a physical drive, though?
There might be too many gotchas in terms of hardware drivers for the host Linux environment, but it seemed like a sweet solution if would work.
Once you manage getting both nvidia and ati drivers installed at the same time, the rest is child's play.
If you've got a fat USB stick, I advocate installing some lightweight edition of Ubuntu to do the job you're trying to do, perhaps lubuntu. I've never tried pointing vmware at a partition, only at an actual raw device. That worked well as long as I made it an IDE device. This is on an Ubuntu host and using a SATA HDD, and later an SSD. If I told it that the disk was SCSI or SATA then Windows 7 got confused. Telling it that the virtual disk was IDE and pointing it at my SATA disk worked great.
The question I have, though, is why not just use vmware player? It costs the same as virtualbox. Last time I checked, it was vastly superior. It doesn't involve Oracle. Seems better all around.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There is no support for USB 3.0, and more and more computers are only coming with USB 3.0 ports. Those are "invisible" to guest systems running under VirtualBox. Otherwise, it pretty much does everything I need it for (running Windows under Linux so I can run TurboTax and Garmin mapping software).
Buzzing the information Superhighway at Warp speed
I find that VirtualBox is a lot stable compared to vmware player and workstation. I had both vmware products freeze the guest and my host machine and then finally crash. Never had a freeze or a crash with virtualbox.
>"Phoronix notes how it has been a long time since last hearing of any major innovations or improvements to VirtualBox,Phoronix notes how it has been a long time since last hearing of any major innovations or improvements to VirtualBox"
And this surprises anyone? This is what happened with most everything Oracle acquired from Sun- they poisoned everything. It is what they do best. It is also why OpenOffice was forked.
Fortunately, VirtualBox still works very well... for now. And I, for one, like that it is stable.
But I want to run multiple Windows systems on a USB stick. I wouldn't bother with virtual box if that was the case.
The idea was to be able to boot a full Windows environment off a USB stick by using virtualbox as basically a shim to work around Windows inability to boot off USB.
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.
Some projects, such as MySQL, have improved massively under Oracle's stewardship. Much more progress has occurred during the past year under Oracle than the couple of years under Sun or even the last year that MySQL was independent.
However, it is sad that VirtualBox's development has slowed. It's suffered from being "good enough".
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
But I want to run multiple Windows systems on a USB stick. I wouldn't bother with virtual box if that was the case.
Well, if you want to run them at the same time, you'll need a VM. But you can install multiple versions of Windows on the same PC so long as you put them in different physical primary partitions and install them in proper order from old to new.
If you use virtualbox (or really any VM) in that context then your filesystem performance is going to be ugh and your response is going to be augh, even with USB3... unless it's a mobile SSD, and not just a stick.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Oracle.
TL;DR: I am an Oracle employee. It's an awesome place to work with above market pay, superb benefits, and a demanding but rewarding engineering culture. Virtualbox is one project in a large and growing virtualization team, creating and improving some truly amazing cutting-edge technologies that make your virtualization life better.
I'm going to share some facts as I see them, and let you draw your own conclusions instead of drawing them for you.
1. The Oracle VM and Oracle VM Virtualbox teams are one and the same within Oracle. There's a lot of cross-pollination of ideas and effort, and the virtualization team is frakking huge: HUNDREDS of developers. Not "4", as some have asserted here! .
2. There's a ton of stuff happening in virtualization at Oracle: https://blogs.oracle.com/virtu...
3. There's a substantial line-up of products that are demo'd to customers as part of "Virtualbox Appliances". Virtualbox demos are a key strategy for introducing many of our products to customers. http://www.oracle.com/technetw...
Corrollary: I manage a lot of ZFS appliances. I like them; they make my job easier, particularly at the kind of scale at which one begins measuring one's storage in exabytes. You should download the Virtualbox-based Oracle ZFS Storage Simulator and check it out. Hint: Dig into the REST interfaces and ECMAscript workflows concepts. This kind of thing is Stored Procedures for enterprise-grade storage appliances with absolutely blistering scale, reliability, and performance, and if you don't yet understand how powerful that idea is, you might be insufficiently experienced in high-end storage and databases.
4. Wim Coekaerts is a smart, friendly, and communicative dude. He also happens to be SVP over our Linux & Virtualization efforts. If you're really interested in the details of virtualization development at Oracle, you should check out his blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/
Next, my opinions. No longer facts!
VirtualBox is a mature, stable product that's doing its job and -- as a GPL project -- seems to me like more a vehicle for showcasing Oracle technology than a revenue generator in its own right. That doesn't mean development has ceased! It just means that, in general, Oracle engineering teams are laser-focused on how we can make money so we can stay employed so we can keep creating really unique and useful products for our customers. Responsibilities on teams shift as need demands, and with such an enormous knowledge base in virtualization on our Engineering staff, there's no question that if a product needs a feature to benefit customers, and a good case can be made that it'll pay off, it gets the engineering resources it needs to give it a try.
The Sun transition was tough for some employees. In advance of the merger, a lot of old-timers split. A lot of younger engineers went looking for somewhere hipper and younger to work than what would become a Fortune 500 company. Many Sun managers, sensing the change in the wind as Oracle's intensely results-oriented management team integrated with them, split for positions elsewhere.
I know and work with the survivors of the merger every day. And overwhelmingly, those who've integrated into Oracle culture, shown they belong here through their productivity and attitude, and produce results consistently have built success upon success, and are valued and rewarded.
They're also a bunch of brainiacs who routinely blow my mind with deep insights into operating systems, hardware, and performance optimization.
Those who don't deal well with rapid change, high expectations, and a dogged focu
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
It possible VirtualBox isn't receiving much love because MS are including virtualization tools out of the box in current versions of Windows?
Thus what incentive do they have to continue funding it?
As far as i know, virtual box is the only free OSS platform that supports forkable snapshots: e.g. the ability to go back to an older snapshot and create new snapshots from that point. (while also keeping all the newer snapshots) This creates a snapshot tree which is great for the development of operating systems, packaging, devops and so on.
This is almost comical and I don't really know how I could have asked these questions any more straightforwardly yet still nobody can actually answer the question. I've held a vmWare VCP certification for the last 5+ years. Compellent certified the last 3. I've forgotten the number of virtualization clusters and SANs I've setup.
Yes, a USB3 stick (in a USB3 port, in case someone wants to tell me that not all ports are USB3) is not quite as good as a SSD, but every time I benchmark them they are extremely fast, ~60 MB/sec throughput. Way faster than any desktop-class SATA disk.
Yes, I know I can use a boot manager to boot from multiple partitions on boot media. But you can't boot Windows from USB media. You can boot most Linux distributions from USB media and Virtualbox will run with Linux as the host OS.
I realize a Windows guest OS would have only partial value booted as a guest OS -- no local hard disk access, even on a PC with Windows as the OS installed to its local hard disk. Other issues could crop up, like limited host OS driver support on whatever platform I tried to boot from. But there many other uses this might have outside of that.
every time I have needed it, virtalbox works fine as it is, what updates does OP want?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Yes, I know I can use a boot manager to boot from multiple partitions on boot media. But you can't boot Windows from USB media.
You can boot Windows 7 and later from USB media, after some twiddling.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Pointers, please. That would be ideal and far better than having to use a virtualization layer.
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.
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-r...
http://www.wintobootic.com/
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, colour me surprised! Oracle inherits an Open Source project from Sun and as they're not making any money off it, they stop spending money on developing it. Film at 11.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
Virtual box is a robust offering for basic desktop virtualization needs. It needn't address every possible use case and supply every new feature every other tool offers, it does a solid job providing basic virtualization services.
Why must every product offer/support every feature?
Ken