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DESCRIPTION
VirtualBox is a family of powerful x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux and Macintosh hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.
VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while innotek ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.
WHAT'S NEW
Version 3.0.12: - VMM: reduced IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 guests; requires 64 bits support (VT-x only; bug #4392)
- VMM: fixed double timer interrupt delivery on old Linux kernels using IO-APIC (caused guest time to run at double speed; bug #3135)
- VMM: reinitialize VT-x and AMD-V after host suspend or hibernate; some BIOSes forget this (Windows hosts only; bug #5421)
- VMM: fix loading of saved state when RAM preallocation is enabled
- BIOS: ignore unknown shutdown codes instead of causing a guru meditation (bug #5389)
- GUI: never start a VM on a single click into the selector window (bug #2676)
- Serial: reduce the probability of lost bytes if the host end is connected to a raw file
- VMDK: fix handling of split image variants and fix a 3.0.10 regression (bug #5355)
- VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash
- Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, some guests were able to send / receive packets (E1000; bug #5366)
- Network: even if the virtual network cable was disconnected, the PCNet card received some spurious packets which might confuse the guest (bug #4496)
- Shared folders: fixed changing case of file names (bug #2520)
- Windows Additions: fix crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
- Linux Additions: fix writing to files opened in O_APPEND mode (bug #3805)
- Solaris Additions: fix regression in guest additions driver which among other things caused lost guest property updates and periodic error messages being written to the system log
REQUIREMENTS
Mac OS X 10.4 or later
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| VirtualBox User Reviews (44 posts) | Write A Review |
 | Oct 18 2008 |
LAINSNAVI I couldn't believe it when I found this thing. I don't need to do anything really demanding in a Windows environment, so I never wanted to pay for virtualization software. I would just boot up Boot Camp whenever necessary. This took away almost every reason for me to use Boot Camp. It'll run Windows XP and 2000 extremely well. I love the seamless mode too. I've had problems connecting a few USB devices to it, but that's about it. I highly recommend this app!
(Version 2.0.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
 | Jun 30 2009 |
E_COMMERCE Still throwing files all over the disk when it has no business doing so. - "/Library/Extensions" is not a standard location (but at least it's not in /System). - StartupItems have been deprecated for over four years. - Mixing in VirtualBox items in /usr/bin instead of /usr/local/bin is annoying. All of this makes it hard to remove, hard to migrate to a new system, and hard to backup (it you're not running Time Machine). What's annoying is that none of this is necessary - kernel extensions can be dynamically loaded from inside the application bundle, the StartupItem can be changed to a launchd agent and loaded dynamically, and the command line utilities are optional (and could be installed by the app on first run if requested). All this detrius is unnecessary and sloppy.
(Version 3.0) | |
| [ 5 Replies - Reply ] | |
Replies:
| Jun 30 2009 |
E_COMMERCE Heh, even worse - it hardcodes the path to the application in the StartupItem - so you can't move it elsewhere without rewriting a root-owned bash script. What utterly horrid design.
(Version 3.0) | |
| Jun 30 2009 |
NEONBLUE2 I haven't installed it yet but can you move the files and put aliases in their place? You could move everything into the application bundle.
(Version 3.0) | |
| Jul 1 2009 |
STAR-AFFINITY Maybe contact the ones working on VirtualBox and ask what they're doing? :) Here perhaps? http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
(Version 3.0) | |
| Jul 1 2009 |
E_COMMERCE Just a follow-on - the application doesn't function at all if you move it out of it's default spot at /Applications. Refuses to launch - tiny blip on the Dock and vanishes. As for posting on mailing lists - do you really think that would do any good whatsoever? When I see a company that doesn't get it as badly as this, I've found they're not going to have an epiphany and suddenly understand why this stuff is important just because I post back and forth on a mailing list. It just wastes everyone's time. No, they can go their way and screw up, and I'll continue on mine and stick with VMware Fusion (a lovely native Mac product from a company that had no Mac experience whatsoever beforehand, and did an absolutely smash-up job).
(Version 3.0) | |
| Oct 6 2009 |
SCOTTISHWILDCAT FWIW, not being able to move the application out of /Applications is a known issue, which has been discussed at length in their public bug tracker.
(Version 3.0.8) | |
| Dec 17 2008 |
ANDY HEWITT I occasionally need to run MS Office in Windows, and test some sites in IE7. Setting up a BootCamp partition, and all the bother of swapping OS just wasn't worthwhile. I also cannot justify spending extra on VMWare or Parallels. I did run the Demo of both, or at least attempt to! Parallels wouldn't successfully install at all, so I deleted it. VMWare didn't offer me anything more than VirtualBox, for my needs. I've now got VirtualBox running XP SP3, and Ubuntu 8.04. MS Office 2007 runs perfectly, and works just as well as the real PC I have here too. So far, I've less app crashes with VirtualBox than the PC. Seamless mode is really nice, and fullscreen mode is superb - the speed is very good. Don't expect games to run well though, but then none of the VM software do well at that. If you have modest VM needs, this works well enough to be productive with.
(Version 2.1) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 27 2009 |
MAC4DREW VirtualBox is great. I needed a program that would let me virtualize Windows, so I could run an EXE every now and then. I was tired of installing a trial of Parallels or VMware just to see it expire after a few weeks. And I didn't want to pay for what was entirely a matter of convenience, seeing as how my Mac is perfectly capable of booting Windows on its own. In steps VirtualBox. I installed Windows XP Service Pack 2 in a virtual machine a few weeks ago, and it's been working flawlessly ever since. All the standard features you'd expect from a Virtual Machine are there, basic configuration is easy, and the thing is rock-solid. Perhaps the configuration of the more advanced features could be a little easier, but the documentation for everything is pretty great. If you know what you're doing, you'll be able to get Shared Folders, USB Device Filtering, and loads of other stuff running with just a few clicks. If you need these advanced features, but you're not super computer-savvy, it may be best to use Parallels or VMware instead. But for everyone else who knows what they're doing, save your $60 and go with VirtualBox.
(Version 3.0.6) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| May 29 2009 |
UNXADM Frequent updates and stability make this a great free alternative to Parallels. They can't even get an update out that supports Ubuntu 9.04. Virtualbox has had already 2 updates since Ubuntu 9.04 came out. Highly recommend it.
(Version 2.2.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Oct 13 2008 |
PAULNOJUSTPAUL What Pietro said! I use XP very occasionally but frequently fire up throwaway redshirt[1] boxes to test different Linux distros. VirtualBox easily covers my needs. Also very impressed with the greatly increased network functionality in the latest release. [1] - Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty, and Ensign Gomez all beam down to a planet. Who doesn't make it back?
(Version 2.0.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 4 2008 |
SCOTTISHWILDCAT Certainly some nice enhancements in 2.0, for Mac users... the native interface isn't much to write home about, but full screen mode works a lot better (especially with Spaces/Expose), and seamless mode now works properly on secondary displays. Not being limited to NAT networking any more is cool, too..
(Version 2.0) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Jan 22 2009 |
ROBACKJA Occasionally need to check how badly IE6/7/8 renders any websites, VirtualBox + XP and Vista Business installed with ease. (One exception with 2.1.0, the 2nd half of Vista's installation did not like VT-x enabled. Leaving it disabled, it installed fine, and seems to run without issue with it enabled)
(Version 2.1.2) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Oct 24 2008 |
JAMUS If you are thinking about VMWare or Parallels, try this first. It is free, so if it does not work out, you are not out any cash. As long as you do not have a demanding Windows environment, you should be good to go with VirtualBox. It does not have some of the cool extras of the other two, but for free, it can't be beat.
(Version 2.0.4) | |
| [ Reply ] | |
| Sep 4 2008 |
CHRISTOPHE DUCOMMUN I'm really happy to see a free Virtualisation software which is correctly working. Thanks SUN !
(Version 2.0) | |
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