I’m excited. Why? Well, you know the feeling when you find a piece of great software which just works? I’m feeling it.

I’m a big fan of virtualisation. Virtualisation is where you use a piece of software to emulate another computer. There are a few good reasons to do this: one is that virtualisation lets you try out software in a separate environment. For example, you might download a program off the Internet, and want to test it out in a place where it can’t harm your data if something were to go wrong. Another reason is compatibility. Do you have a piece of software that won’t run on Windows Vista or Windows XP? No problem, you can fire up a virtualisation program and install a virtual copy of Windows 98, and install the program you need to use inside that. Virtualisation is also a great way to run all of those classic DOS games that generations of people grew up with. Who can’t remember being dazzled by the graphics of Wolfenstein 3D, then Doom, then Duke Nukem 3D? Virtualisation allows you to relive these precious memories of gaming nostalgia.

The key to virtualisation is of course the virtualisation software. Microsoft has software called Virtual PC for this purpose. It was originally a Connectix product that was designed for running Windows on a Mac, but since Microsoft bought it, it’s now marketed at being a compatibility solution for older software. Microsoft also decided to make it free to download.

The other key player is VMWare. VMWare is a company that works exclusively on virtualisation, especially for virtualising servers. They product Virtual PC’s main opponent, VMWare Workstation. VMWare Workstation whips the pants off Virtual PC with its increased speed and better features. For instance, VMWare lets you run your virtual machines in tabs (like Firefox), it lets you take snapshots (ie. you can restore the virtual machine to a previous state, very convenient), and it gives you better networking options. Another cool feature is its USB support: you can share USB devices plugged into your physical computer, with your virtual computer. So you can plug your USB flash drive in and use it in your virtual machine, or even use your webcam. Nice.

So here’s the problem. VMWare Workstation is excellent, but it’s expensive, by a few hundred bucks. Virtual PC is free, but kinda sucks. It’s great for running DOS, and older OSes, but performance when running Windows XP sucks. Is there a free, open-source virtualiser which will give me all the features I want?

Yes.

VirtualBox is a free, open-source virtualiser which offers most of the features that make VMWare great. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, and is able to virtualise all versions of Windows, most newer Linux distros, and FreeBSD.

It’s very fast: on my Core 2 Duo, I can boot Windows XP inside VirtualBox in 10 seconds, about the same speed as VMWare but a lot faster than Virtual PC.

A convenient feature of VirtualBox is the snapshots feature. Just like VMWare, it lets you take a snapshot of a virtual machine, so that if you screw up (let’s say a virus gets onto your virtual machine), with one click you can be back to how the machine was. It’s certainly a convenience while testing out software.

VirtualBox has a lot of nice networking features, including NAT (where the virtual machine shares your real IP address). A very nice feature is that each machine emulates a Remote Desktop server, so you can use Remote Desktop on another computer on your network to connect to the virtual machine, regardless of whether it is running Windows XP Pro or not.

VirtualBox also has the USB sharing features of VMWare. While not exactly as easy to use (you need to define the USB device first), it works just as well. It works excellently with my Texas Instruments TI-89 Graphics Calculator and my new SanDisk Cruzer Micro 4GB USB drive. It doesn’t work so well with my Logitech webcam, but I can’t expect it to do everything.

Here’s a screenshot of my Windows XP install running inside VirtualBox. It runs very well; it’s even fast enough to play full motion video and sound as you can see:

Overall, the software seems to be very well polished, though it’s a little rough in a few areas. Sometimes the USB support will break, but unplugging and replugging your USB device usually fixes it.

Anyway, I think I’m going to start using VirtualBox as my virtualiser of choice. It’s great, with all the great features I want, and at a price I’m certainly willing to pay: nothing! VirtualBox certainly gets my two geeky thumbs up. Download it from Softpedia here.

–Ben

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This entry was posted on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 12:16 am and is filed under Computing. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.