[jmbattle]

Hello folks,

Has anyone had a chance to try this new open source virtual machine software - http://www.virtualbox.org ?

I wonder how it compares in terms of speed with VMware, VirtualPC and Bochs.

Cheers,
James
x

[theSLug]

try asap, potentially a great free software.

tnx jm for post this

[theSLug]

works well whit XP, and run the vista installation.
a GREAT free VM imho!



theSLug

[jaclaz]

Thanks for the heads up!

jaclaz

[Lemonzest]

Works well here, thanks

[Tarun]

I believe this should have been posted in the Tech News section.

Nice find, regardless.

[CoffeeFiend]

More virtualization solutions (more choice) is always a good thing. But there's already tons of very good free offerings: VMWare Server, VMWare Player, MS Virtual Server 2005 R2, MS Virtual PC (not counting QEmu, KVM, Xen, Bochs and all that), and a bunch of cheap ones like Parallels.

The interesting part isn't so much that it's free (as in 0$) as there's already more than enough free solutions, but it's open source.

Either ways I'm sticking to VMWare Server (and the VMWare Converter for MS' .VHD files)

[DigeratiPrime]

Looks nice

BTW what VM's right now take advantage of AMD Virtualization Technology a.k.a AMD-V or Pacifica?

[edit] nvm I think I found the answer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtualizatio...re_utilizing_VT

[Camarade_Tux]

Has anyone had a chance to see how well it performed ?

[Zxian]

There's a bug with the link on the frontpage - sends you to wwwl.virtualbox.org.

[Martin L]

Zxian, on Jan 17 2007, 11:20 PM, said:

There's a bug with the link on the frontpage - sends you to wwwl.virtualbox.org.

fixed that thanks

[DigeratiPrime]

Camarade_Tux, on Jan 17 2007, 03:37 PM, said:

Has anyone had a chance to see how well it performed ?

One thing I like is it is only a 10.8MB MSI Installer (extracted/installed its about 21.3MB) so its much leaner than VMWare Workstation v5.5 (90MB MSI), which includes some large iso's.

I just tested it on my new X2 3800 (AM2) with XP Pro SP2 and the performance was excellent, definetly better than VMWare with my last cpu (Venice 3000). However I have not tested VMWare yet with my new processor so the results may be better or same.

[edit] if you install the "Guest Additions" (think VMware tools) the performance is almost native!
Still gotta test vmware with new cpu to compare, but this is awesome
Some observations: cannot drag and drop files between host and guest with the additions installed.

[Jeremy]

I just tried it out. It outperforms VMware and the snapshots are about the same size as VMware snapshots. They are stored in:
C:\Documents and Settings\Username\.VirtualBox\Machines\Virtual Machine Name\
Once I am done a current project that I use VMware for, I will be switching over.

[ripken204]

how much longer does it take to install than vmware? lol

[DigeratiPrime]

I am building a new "nLited" XP with the new RyanVM update pack, I will record the time it take to install it for both VirtualBox and VMware, either tonight or tommorow.
PS Thanks Jeremy I was wondering where the snapshots were being stored, did not bother to investigate

[DigeratiPrime]

Here are the results. I compared the time it took to install xp pro sp2 from the time the vm powered on to the time the desktop was loaded (wallpaper, taskbar, etc, appeared). I used the same iso file as the install source, both vms had the same disk span and memory allocation. Both vm's were created on a partition with about 34GB of free space and about 2% fragmentation.

VirtualBox - 9:19
VMware - 10:12

Thats about 10% faster

NOTE that Windows Setup time is probably largely determined by the read/write speed of the hard drive and not so much the vm. So I would expect a wider performance rift in benchmarks that better test the vm software itself.

[Camarade_Tux]

Could you please try a benchmark with 7-zip ?

[DigeratiPrime]

I dont see what that has to do with the VM though? I would like to see some more dual core benchmarks too if thats what you meant

[Camarade_Tux]

It's just that in the file manager, in the tool menu you can run a benchmark and I think it would give a good idea of how good it performs from a CPU/memory point of view.

[cyberpyr8]

Does it have any support for existing VM's from VMWare or MS?