Does VirtualBox VM Have Much A Future Left?

[duby229]

Yeah, vbox could be forked, but it's such a big codebase it's not really feasible without commercial backing. That's where Oracle fails. Again.


Even OSS devs deserve to get paid. I'd say especially OSS devs deserve to get paid. They should get paid more.

[q2dg]

Most of the Vbox software IS opensource, so anyone could takeover the development and advance VBox.

[overwhelming sound of crickets]

It's true

What I like most of VirtualBox is its consistency between OSs...KVM+libvirt isn't usable on Windows, for instance.

[duby229]

It's true

What I like most of VirtualBox is its consistency between OSs...KVM+libvirt isn't usable on Windows, for instance.

VMWare player isn't OSS, but if you want something that works across linux and windows it's better than vbox. At least VMWare cares about their product. Oracle obviously doesn't give a shit about any of Sun's products.

[joh22n]

I have used VirtualBox for at least 5 years to test my webapps on different platforms/browsers. It is a great piece of software for that purpose and for me there are no features missing, it does everything that I need and it does it conventiently.

[q2dg]

VMWare player isn't OSS, but if you want something that works across linux and windows it's better than vbox. At least VMWare cares about their product. Oracle obviously doesn't give a shit about any of Sun's products.

If it's not OSS it's not an option for me, sorry

[DanL]

qemu's not as difficult as the documentation makes it out to be, especially since version 2.2 added shorthand syntax to set up disk drives. The important thing for decent performance is to use -enable-kvm, -cpu host, and specify more RAM than the paltry 128MB default. This command gets me what I want (and add "-cdrom file.iso" the first time you run to load install media).

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -machine q35 -m 2G -soundhw hda /path/to/disk.img

[GreatEmerald]

What is VirtualBox missing, exactly? Aside from VGA passthrough, I suppose; but then it's becoming less and less needed, given the advances in Wine and a wider variety of native games.

I recently used VirtualBox to set up a "cross-compilation" Windows environment for my card game, and before that to test how far one can go with using only GPL software on Gentoo.

[duby229]

If it's not OSS it's not an option for me, sorry

Yeah, I feel the same way in a lot of cases.

[r_a_trip]

qemu's not as difficult as the documentation makes it out to be, especially since version 2.2 added shorthand syntax to set up disk drives. The important thing for decent performance is to use -enable-kvm, -cpu host, and specify more RAM than the paltry 128MB default. This command gets me what I want (and add "-cdrom file.iso" the first time you run to load install media).

qemu-system-x86_64 -enable-kvm -cpu host -machine q35 -m 2G -soundhw hda /path/to/disk.img

This might be easy for developers and seasoned users, but not everybody likes the CLI. For these people the friendly GUI interface of VBox is a life saver. CLI for them is a no go and Virt-manager + KVM/Qemu is an incomprehensible cornucopia of options and switches. It's too bad there is no visible competition in the friendly, do-it-at-home virtualisation market on Linux.

Has Gnome Boxes progressed lately?

[duby229]

What is VirtualBox missing, exactly? Aside from VGA passthrough, I suppose; but then it's becoming less and less needed, given the advances in Wine and a wider variety of native games.

I recently used VirtualBox to set up a "cross-compilation" Windows environment for my card game, and before that to test how far one can go with using only GPL software on Gentoo.

I wouldn't say it's missing anything critical. Just that it needs rebased. It needs cleaned up and bug fixed. It's obviously bitrotting.