Monday, July 28, 2008

VirtualBox Rules!

I've tried VirtualBox on Raymond's recommendation. Finally I can say this with a with certainty:

Sun Microsystems' VirtualBox platform works!

  • VirtualBox kicks VirtualPC2007's ass.
  • QEMU has been disappointing.

Before anyone takes up arms over this, let me defend myself.

My Host is running Vista.

Face it. Only VirtualBox has an option for Ubuntu in the Guest OS Type selection. The install went smoothly and soon, I was rebooting into my spanking new Ubuntu system. In no time, I am writing this entry using Firefox in my Ubuntu VM running in VirtualBox.

VPC 2007 crashed even before the installer could start (this is a known issue). After using all the workarounds I could find on the web, installation still managed to hang at different points in the process. Networking is unstable. Rsync to another machine on the LAN would break at unknown intervals too.

I tried QEMU 0.9.0 and 0.9.1. One of them cannot run in Vista, the other one cannot run in XP, I'm not sure which one. Anyway, whichever one that ran, also hung during the installation phase.

I may have gotten something wrong previously, but hey, VirtualBox gave me no room for error. It got everything right!

Finally I can try all the Linux systems I want!

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