January 26, 2009

VirtualBox rocks!

I started using Linux back in 1995, and soon abandoned Windows in favor of Linux, only occasionally dual-booting to Windows for the known reasons you can't avoid (PowerPoint)! Using Gentoo for the last 5 years I was feeling like trying more Linux distributions. Getting a larger storage space, I started installing OpenSuse, Sabayon, Kubuntu, etc. Soon it became a bit of headache until I found out about VirtualBox. VirtualBox is a virtual machine program allowing you to run a large number of guest OSes (Operating Systems) from your host OS.

I have since then kept only one main Linux distribution and run every other OS through VirtualBox.

There may be a lot of virtualization solutions now-days but hey, VirtualBox is free, easy to setup and use. It runs on both Linux, Windows and Leopard and allows for both Linux and Windows guest operating systems (not supporting Leopard guest is the only missing point). It also supports enhanced host OS integration through the so called guest applications!

It is also fast even for machines without hardware virtualization (VT-x/AMD-V) support, as long as you have enough memory to run any Guest OS (768 should be enough in most cases). I tested it on my old laptop (IBM R50e Pentium M 1.5 GHz - no hardware virtualization support) and I was impressed by it's speed!

Well done Sun!

Coolness factor: 5/5!

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