Virtualbox is pretty darned awesome. I've used it on both Windows and Mac host systems, to run both windows and Mac client systems. It's really been a life saver for allowing clients to continue to use outdated -- but irreplaceable -- software. Yes it does have quirks and bugs. But they are few and far between in my experience. If all you're doing is running one important outdated app, this will probably do the trick. If it doesn't, then I recommend VMWare Fusion which is less than $100.
Finally I found the solution to get the full screen with Linux, there is still the problem of installing it on Mac (is there anyone who knows the solution?). I'm fine with Windows. Great program ...
Virtualbox is pretty darned awesome. I've used it on both Windows and Mac host systems, to run both windows and Mac client systems. It's really been a life saver for allowing clients to continue to use outdated -- but irreplaceable -- software. Yes it does have quirks and bugs. But they are few and far between in my experience. If all you're doing is running one important outdated app, this will probably do the trick. If it doesn't, then I recommend VMWare Fusion which is less than $100.
virtualbox 6.0.10
on iMac 2019 custom SSD 1Tb, radeon pro vega 48
i experience mac os restart each install new virtual machine, windows or linux. i don't understand why
is there anyone experience same problem? i think i'll buy fusion then
Has anyone tried VirtualBox 6 on a 5K iMac? The one main reason I will not use VB over a commercial product such as VMware Fusion is because VirtualBpx has never played nicely with the 5K retina display. Guest graphics run extremely slow, and other glitches such dragging the guest window causes desktop loss of the guest as in the graphics didn't re-draw correct.
I'm mainly talking version 5X here, but wanted to find out if anyone has used version 6 and experienced better performance. I thought I would ask and get feedback first before downloading it and not having it work any better.
Thanks.
Forget Parallels VMware Fusion and the rest. The new VirtualBox as far as I am concerned out performs them all. It supports Mohave already without having to pay Parallels a 50$ minimum to upgrade plus a subscription. The install is easy and quick. Support from the Community quick and accurate. Updates are free! The app is Free! Why would you not use it! Beats the hell out of me!
What can be said has mostly been said, but I'll chime in. It's not quite as nice to configure as Parallels, but once it's running it's fantastic. Two-way clipboard support just works, and the granular control over the emulated hardware (how many cores, how much RAM, what size drive, etc.) makes it sweet for testing system parameters. I triple boot on my MacBook, but may toss that for using virtualized PCs.
It works well with most Linuxes I throw at it (have had some issues with Linux Mint and video drivers). It works well with Windows. Parallels seems to virtualize Mac OS more smoothly. For free (I, too, was tired of the "subscription model" annual upgrade pleas/threats), I really have to try to find a problem with it.
I sometimes wonder if VMWare Fusion would be worth it, for the raw device support, etc., but I understand that it can be configured in VirtualBox, with patience and Terminal-fu.
In short, it does so much of what I need it to do that the commercial competitors don't have an appeal for me. I may, eventually, see if qemu is faster, but that's even more arcane, so it's not likely in the short term.
VirtualBox 5.1.14 Build 112924 is available for download as of January 17, 2017.
What's new in this version:
- VMM: fixed emulation of certain instructions for 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts - VMM: properly handle certain MSRs for 64-bit guests on ancient CPUs without VT-x support for MSR bitmaps (bug #13886) - GUI: fixed a crash with multimonitor setups under certain conditions - GUI: allow cloning of snapshots when the VM is running - NVMe: fixed compatibility with the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK, bug #16368) - VBoxSVC: fixed a crash under rare circumstances - VBoxManage: added a sanity check to modifymedium --resize to prevent users from resizing their hard disk from 1GB to 1PB (bug #16311)
Used different Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion and all of them are good but they need to be upgraded every year to be compatible with latest MacOS Versions. Since a few years back I got tired of this "subscription" based upgrades and tried VirtualBox. Works just as good but without the yearly "fee".
Version 5.1.2 of Virtualbox is out, and I tried it this morning, running into problems with audio.
When I tried to start a newly created VM , no matter what audio card i used in settings, I got a HostAudio Security warning, and there was no audio in the VM. I tried both AC97, and intel HD audio with CoreAudio as the driver.
I've checked online, but can't find any reports or references to this specific problem, and I've gone to the virtualbox support room on IRC, and didn't get an answer yet . So Hopefully someone here might know what's going on. Also this a warning to alert others this problem seems to have come either with the new version of Vbox or apple has changed something in 10.11.6 security wise that virtualbox doesn't like.
I downloaded this yesterday to see if I could install OPENSTEP 4.2 on it. It was a PITA to set up, and in the end I couldn't figure out how to attach a floppy disk image. I'm guessing you can't. But it's free... I ended up using VMWare.
I had a big problem with latest update 5.0.14 as my mouse disappeared and I had no control with it on VirtualBox application as well as with MacOS applications.
I had to quit VB with cmd-opt-esc and re-install the previous version 5.0.12.
First time I have a problem with VB that I use since long time :(
I hope to see a fix soon.
Hard to setup compared to VMware Fusion. Ones you get your VM OS working it has great speed for most needs. Not recommended for playing games though. The DirectX support is poor and crash prone.
Still a very capable VM client ! Try this before cashing out on Fusion ot Parallels Desktop.
VirtualBox 5.0.8 is out.
Also patches some security bugs in previous versions.
Download from website http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/virtualbox/downloads/index.html.
Version 5.0.4 is released at virtual box.org. So far it seems to have fixed a lot of the problems I was having with early version of 5x including buggy and choppy audio play back. Continuing to do tests with various guests. Also seems to run quite well on the latest public beta of El Capitan.
Installer of Version 5.x gives me "The installer has detected an unsupported operation system. VirtualBox requires Mac OS X 10.8 or later.".
So requirements unfortunately seem to be "Intel, 64-bit processor, OS X 10.8 or later", not OS X 10.6 or later.
I find VIrtual Box has served me well for all those years. I started using it way back almost from day one when it was just small German company later acquired by Sun and then Oracle. It's not the Rolls Royce or Porsche of the virtualization but I found Virtual Box using minimal resources able to run on any machine. For example, I used to have a small Asus netbook running WinXP as host and Windows 2003 Server with SAP installed on it. SAP is like this giant tanker compared to this tiny raft. The netbook was running just reasonably OK, it was taxing it's resources, but apparently the 2GB Ram and relatively fast aftermarket SSD was sufficient. I tried the same thing with VMware or Parallels .. and forget it. It was just horribly slow and buggy.
So I find VirtualBox major advantage was it is designed as very sleek product. If you have big server and the machines are running mission critical systems, then maybe VMWare or Microsoft Hyper-V are absolute must and safer choice as these have more redundancies built in and proper support.
But if you run anything else that is not mission critical system or database server for business, then by all means, VirtualBox would be the favourite to consider.
One area which could be improved in VirtualBox is the management of virtual machines, maintenance and the documentation. A lot of things is on different places and for a newbie not easy to understand, so a lot of this requires try-and-see approach.
The requirements are wrong. I've found this one in the User Manuals:
Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1. Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) and earlier was removed with VirtualBox 5.0.
VirtualBox is great for what it is. Occasionally rough around the edges but it works and is a good choice for people whose needs don't warrant a paid product. I have just one or two applications that require Windows and this is a good way to get the job done.
Free virtualisation. Whilst VirtualBox doesn't offer the performance or polish of other products I still rate it higher because it's free. All you have to lose is a little time spent setting it up. For the most part VirtualBox works well; it just requires a bit more work than other solutions. If you're on a budget however VB is a great alternative to Parallels or VMware Fusion and is well worth checking out.
I have tried using VirtualBox several times. But I always bump into troubles installing VM (both Windows and OSX). Although newer versions are better it is still a tool that is not recommended for casual/novice users.
4 stars for being free - 2 stars for being difficult to install.
I have tried using VirtualBox several times. But I always bump into troubles installing VM (both Windows and OSX). Although newer versions are better it is still a tool that is not recommended for casual/novice users.
4 stars for being free - 2 stars for being difficult to install.
(Sorry for the duplicate post...the first one appeared to not work so I hit SUBMIT again)
You'd think after all these years on MacUpdate I'd get used to it, but I haven't. I'm continually amazed the users here consistently give an INFERIOR app higher ratings simply because it's free. If Parallels or VMWare Fusion were free...they'd be the highest rated virtualization apps rated in MacUpdate. This generally holds true for most other apps as well...if it's cheap and at least works, it gets the highest ratings. VirtualBox simply doesn't hold a candle to Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
You'd think after all these years on MacUpdate I'd get used to it, but I haven't. I'm continually amazed the users here consistently give an INFERIOR app higher ratings simply because it's free. If Parallels or VMWare Fusion were free...they'd be the highest rated virtualization apps rated in MacUpdate. This generally holds true for most other apps as well...if it's cheap and at least works, it gets the highest ratings. VirtualBox simply doesn't hold a candle to Parallels or VMWare Fusion.
I have tried pretty much every virtual machine software package that is well known. If i was someone who really lived in virtual machines for work or needed one any lenguh of time I would probably continue to pay for VMware fusion updates. However, the main reason I used virtualbox or vmware was early on for windows compatibility which the need isn't that great anymore, or what I need on occasaion usually works in wine. The second reason is, for Linux which the need for a virtual machine isn't demanded anymore right now as I now have a physical non apple machine I can test linux on. The other thing is virtualbox is a nice cross platform solution if i need to transfer vms between machines, or just want to whip up a quick vm to test a distro before deciding to employ it on the media server/desktop.
current machines are a late 2013 macbook pro retina 13" and a HP Pavailion as the linux desktop/media server. I've never had a hard time getting help with Vbox when i've needed it either. and while it may not support every single distro of linux in name i've found if the distro in question is based on a known distro setting up the vm for that distro has worked well. Also setting the general linux options seem to work ok as well . The HP is an older system so while it does have a 64-bit cpu it's not equiped with VT-X so vms run slower and are limited to 32 bit so that makes it nice being able to copy the vm to the macbook as it will run at faster speeds if i need to test something that requires more. Overall I am pleased with the work Sun started, and Oracle has continued with this project.
Download link wont work due to "last minute changes" new download link is http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.3.10/VirtualBox-4.3.10-93012-OSX.dmg
I am glad (and amused) to hear that VirtualBox will work on Mavericks. What I'd like to know, if people's memories are deep enough, is when would you use it? For what purposes?
In other words, what programs would you run on that you can't do without using it? Other than taking a stroll down memory lane, where's the benefit?
I've still got a couple of Wang PC's in my attic. (I donated one of that set of three to a museum in Texas). So, I have all of the MS-DOS software (and the originally soft floppy discs!) that do with them. But, even though I'm a pack rat, I still don't bother to get them out just to look at green text on a screen anymore.
Still THE best choice (well, only choice) in free virtual machine software. Been using it ever since I got stuck on a Mac... and use it on Linux machines... for the freedom to run anything I want in software.
I cannot get anything but crashes/ error messages since I installed maverick. I did reinstall the same-newest version and it worked once and not since.
Small question, observation.
Lately my VB isn't loading.
Says there's not enough memory, but the only thing I've done is ADD more ram to the machine. Regardless, when I hit "Update" it points me to 4.2.18, but I'm running OS10.5.8 and VB 4.2.18 indicates OS10.6 minimum. So I don't know if I should update or if they just haven't a very good update routine. 2 cents here anyway. Love the program (when it's working.)
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What's new in this version:
- VMM: fixed emulation of certain instructions for 64-bit guests on 32-bit hosts
- VMM: properly handle certain MSRs for 64-bit guests on ancient CPUs without VT-x support for MSR bitmaps (bug #13886)
- GUI: fixed a crash with multimonitor setups under certain conditions
- GUI: allow cloning of snapshots when the VM is running
- NVMe: fixed compatibility with the Storage Performance Development Kit (SPDK, bug #16368)
- VBoxSVC: fixed a crash under rare circumstances
- VBoxManage: added a sanity check to modifymedium --resize to prevent users from resizing their hard disk from 1GB to 1PB (bug #16311)
To see what's new, view change log at: https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
You'd think after all these years on MacUpdate I'd get used to it, but I haven't. I'm continually amazed the users here consistently give an INFERIOR app higher ratings simply because it's free. If Parallels or VMWare Fusion were free...they'd be the highest rated virtualization apps rated in MacUpdate. This generally holds true for most other apps as well...if it's cheap and at least works, it gets the highest ratings. VirtualBox simply doesn't hold a candle to Parallels or VMWare Fusion.