VMWare vs VirtualPC vs VirtualBox
As you may know I’ve recently discovered Virtual Machines. It all started with a LAMP Appliance on the VMWare Player. But you can’t create a windows machine with the player, so VirtualPC got a look. But then I heard VirtualBox can handle arbitrary screen sizes, so now that’s got a go too. Might be worth comparing and consolidating. All of them are running on Windows XP host.
It might only be because it’s got the most recent start but I’m liking VirtualBox at the moment. Here’s a summary:
VMWare Player (2.0.2)
+ strong community of freely available appliances – not to be underestimated
+ excellent portability – just copy one file around and edit an xml – easy snapshots
- won’t minimize to the system tray so machines pile up and my clutter desktop
- requires a group of services to run in the background (eg. vmware-authd)
- can’t create my own vm’s (Their idea is you buy vm workstation)
VirtualPC (6.0)
+ pretty GUI
+ collapses onto desktop nicely
- no community or appliances
VirtualBox (1.5.6)
+ pretty GUI
+ portable, just one file and an xml (but you need to ‘clone’ that file so not quite as easy vmware)
+ snapshot feature which reduces overall portability but is pretty handy for reseting the machine
+ can resize the screen to whatever size you like
- small community (just some linux distros, no appliances. But somehow I got the idea that they’re working toward vmware compatibility)
John is a freelance programmer living in Sydney Australia. He blogs whatever takes his fancy; computing tips, travel letters, and random stuff from his life. He does it primarily to learn and demonstrate the running of a website.
Use vmware server console or a pretty little application called visionApp Remote Desktop.
You can also install a virtual machine as a service. I did try once, but ran out of play time.
I’ve also found not starting up my cd rom helps a little to. You can configure all this in the vmware server console application.
My two cents.
I have tried all of them and the best for me is Virtual Box
I might add that since posting this I’m completely sold on VirtualBox. And so are Sun.
I haven’t opened either VMWare nor VirtualPC since, except for a quick check of their contents before deletion.
I wrote this little post over six months ago yet it remains far and away the most sought after page on my humble little blog. Perhaps I’ve nothing else of interest to say. So another update…
VirtualBox still wins.
I haven’t gone back to VMware or Virtual PC and I do use Virtual machines A LOT now, so I think that says a lot; having nothing to complain about is pretty impressive for me.
I might complain that the updates for VirtualBox are coming thick and fast, but is that really anything to complain about?! They’re up to version “2.1.2″ today. Fortunately you can just install the new over the old and everything continues along its merry way.
The most favourable new feature for me was the sorting out of the network stack. It used to be slightly ugly, on a windows host, to set the guest up as a reachable host from the local network. That’s all gone now and the guest operating system can sit on my local network like a real machine without any mucking around setting up host OS bridges and the like. Like vmware, the “host interface” option now ‘just works’. Brilliant. They fixed up the lack of a “ping” response while they were at it which helps too. All this on GPL! (“free” for personal use).
I have no difficulties running a Windows 7 guest on my Windows XP host which is quite bemusing.
But there are other features I don’t even remember to mention, probably because they work so well:
This is not a feature exactly but I have a “dodgy” windows xp guest I use when dealing with something that might include a virus or such. One day that VM kept blue screening whenever I used the right click. Turns out something had attached itself to the context menu and was trying to run itself. I’m not sure why that would cause a blue screen, but I’m quite happy that it didn’t upset my host OS. I’d like to know if a rootkit which gets itself onto the guest can find its way onto the host. Anyone?
Thanks for this interesting article! I’ve been using VMware and MS Virtual PC for some time. I like the VWmware for its speed but not for its services etc that I think may make my PC a little slower to start up. MS seems simpler but runs the guest slower. So now I’m going to try VirtualBox.
@John
No way in the world a rootkit will get through. UNLESS: you are transfering executables between VMs and the Host OR you have an open writeable share on the Host OS the rootkit etc to deposit its payload into and for you to run that executable in your host OS environment under an account with administrative perms (ie. UAC turned off – a very very dumb thing to do these days!)