VirtualBox

innotek VirtualBox is a family of virtual machine products targeting desktop computers, enterprise servers and embedded systems.

VirtualBox works on any PC with an x86 architecture. VirtualBox also supports Intel's hardware virtualization VT-x and has experimental support for AMD's AMD-V, but doesn't use either of them by default.

There are two versions of the VirtualBox software. The full VirtualBox package is released under a proprietary license which allows using the software free-of-charge for personal and educational use and evaluation of the product. The second version called the VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE) is missing some features (as shown below).

VirtualBox 1.5.6

Price Free to download (for personal and evaluation use) Size Binaries only for full version License VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) or General Public License v2 for OSE edition Developer innotek GmbH Website www.virtualbox.org System Requirements Reaonably powerful CPU 512MB or more 30MB Hard disk space to install Supported guest operating system Support Sites: User Manual, VirtualBox Forums, VirtualBox FAQ Selected Reviews: Linux.com, MangoOrange, DesktopLinux, Linux Gazette

Features include:

•  Modularity. VirtualBox has a modular design with internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or even remotely
• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers
• Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless
• Shared folders.VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as 'shared folders', which can then be accessed from within virtual machines
• Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host (not available in OSE)
• Supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data (not available in OSE)
• USB over RDP. With this feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client (not available in OSE)

Last Updated Sunday, April 20 2008 @ 07:41 AM EDT