Does VirtualBox VM Have Much A Future Left?

[duby229]

There is really no need. KVM is way forward, it is GNU/Linux's killer app. It works now on ARM, Power and x86, while VirtualBox is x86 only due to hideous amount of x86 assembly code. Windows port of Vbox is of no use for me, I don't use Windows for years.

In a way I agree with you. But it's biggest drawback is it's reliance on vnc to draw the display. It's sooo painfully slow. VNC is terrible.

[chrismile]

[*]USB 3.0 support. It's embarrassing that USB 3.0 has been around for nearly 7 years yet there is no sign that VirtualBox will support it anytime soon. Other virtualization products have full USB 3.0 support.

I get your point here. It really bothers me that I can't access any USB devices on the VM when they are connected to a USB 3.0 port.
I hope that they will finally fix it at least in the next years, but after reading comments on the VirtualBox forums there seems to be no interest in supporting it. Their reaction is always something like "no one needs USB 3.0!".
But if there are only 4 developers left, I feel really sorry for those few who have to maintain the whole product.

[vadix]

I have used VB for a while, but I recently switched to GNOME Boxes. It is a little wonky, but when it releases I expect it to be much better than it already is. The performance is good since it uses KVM without any problems.

[wizard69]

Virtualbox has gotten sorta buggy since Oracle took over. I think it's just bitrot, they haven't done much with it.

Why would they when they are going LINUX? Sometimes it just makes sense to abandon something that has ran its course. If there was a pressing need for Virtual box the community would pick up support and development.

Not a big fan of Oracle. They have a long history of buying competitors for the sole purpose of killing them off. The SEC should have stepped in a bunch of times.

The SEC has nothing to do with that! Further if you where the owners of some of the companies Oracle has paid huge bucks for you would be sitting happy.

[dega704]

Rest in peace

Virtualbox has gotten sorta buggy since Oracle took over. I think it's just bitrot, they haven't done much with it.

Not a big fan of Oracle. They have a long history of buying competitors for the sole purpose of killing them off. The SEC should have stepped in a bunch of times.

In this particular case, Oracle bought Sun for the sole purpose of using their patents to sue Google; thank god that effort fell flat on its face, at least. OpenSolaris is dead, OpenOffice got ripped in half, and now VirtualBox is slowly wasting away. What a waste. For a time, it was particularly valuable to me as a tool to resurrect old, dead servers as VMs for customers that still needed them. You can dd or cat the disk partition and pipe it to vboxmanage. It didn't always work flawlessly, but it definitely pulled off a few miracles for me.

[wizard69]

What's up with the command line phobia? It's strange hearing it on phoronix forums.

Maybe, the problem is always how frequently you use something.

[NotMine999]

Phobia?

What's up with the command line phobia? It's strange hearing it on phoronix forums.

The way I read the comments here about CLI versus GUI is this: documentation.

Yep, that "big word" that most developers don't seem to bother with. Most developers do a decent job writing code that works, but then they leave the documentation up to whatever time they have left, or have someone else, like a volunteer, write the dox. Either case: FAIL.

Manpage style documentation seems more targeted at users that already have a good knowledge of the program, but they just need that hint, that clue, that "jog to their memory" to help them figure out some arcane CLI option. Even a lot of online documentation is little more than Manpages sucked into webpages and possibly reformatted.

Then there are users that just like working in a GUI. In that case, documentation should also be written for the GUI format. It does not need to be fancy, "skinnable", or even support all your Facebook/Twitter/Instragram buttons. It just needs to be helpful and easy to use.

Good documentation to me clearly explains what various options mean & do, not to mention any applicable "default values". When documentation is in it's GUI form, a nice screenshot or two is always helpful, like the old Windows ".CHM" files could support. An index is needed for any program that might have more than 2 options. Having various "worked examples", especially in CLI for CLI users, really helps develop an understanding of how to use a program.

Alas! Documentation is usually an "after thought".

[duby229]

Why would they when they are going LINUX? Sometimes it just makes sense to abandon something that has ran its course. If there was a pressing need for Virtual box the community would pick up support and development.


The SEC has nothing to do with that! Further if you where the owners of some of the companies Oracle has paid huge bucks for you would be sitting happy.

IMO that is the wrong attitude. OSS devs shouldn't have to work for free. They -should- get paid for their work, they deserve to get paid. A fork of that size is bad for everyone. It duplicates effort that could be going into a different existing project.

Forks are not always the answer. In this case, without commercial backing a fork would have no chance for success.

[wizard69]

Sun was on the rocks, Oracle bought them to make sure they had hardware to run their software on. Seeing Google was more of an after thought probably concocted with input from Steve Jobs.

In any event if they purchased Sun for their hardware there is no reason to keep software around that they don't use.

In this particular case, Oracle bought Sun for the sole purpose of using their patents to sue Google; thank god that effort fell flat on its face, at least. OpenSolaris is dead, OpenOffice got ripped in half, and now VirtualBox is slowly wasting away. What a waste. For a time, it was particularly valuable to me as a tool to resurrect old, dead servers as VMs for customers that still needed them. You can dd or cat the disk partition and pipe it to vboxmanage. It didn't always work flawlessly, but it definitely pulled off a few miracles for me.

[Licaon]

After 4.3.12 they thought of securing their Windows version, as in the next 2 releases or so having an antivirus means you can't start you VM, they slowly fixed that, kinda one AV at a time.

Now at 4.3.21 you still can't have stuff like MacType ( https://code.google.com/p/mactype/ ) or a patched uxtheme.dll for custom themes because security FFS!

So I'm stuck at version .12 released on May 16th 2014!

What about Linux? Works as expected, secure as expected with custom themes dammit!

VBox is still useful for fast tests that don't need a separate running hardware, put 2 or 3 VMs up, say TinyCoreLinux images, link them up and go have fun.