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VirtualBox 2.1 Supports 64-Bit VM In 32-Bit Host 374

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the big-box-inside-a-little-box dept.
Stephen Birch writes "Following closely behind the mid-November 2.06 release of VirtualBox, Sun Microsystems has released version 2.1. This has a number of new features, but one of the most interesting is the ability to run a 64-bit VM inside a 32-bit host. Another useful feature is integrated host-based networking; no more fiddling around with network bridges. Sun is really giving VMWare a run for their money."
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VirtualBox 2.1 Supports 64-Bit VM In 32-Bit Host More

VirtualBox 2.1 Supports 64-Bit VM In 32-Bit Host

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  • .. and .. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:20PM (#26201507)

    .. opengl acceleration on windows guests on any opengl capable host! beat that vmware!

    • Re:.. and .. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:37PM (#26201763)

      The part of this I am looking forward too is the future plan to allow DX using the host hardware iwthin the guest. So I can finally drop a native windows install for gaming.

    • When I am running virtual box do I create new security holes?

      That is to say, suppose for example, the host is a mac and it has a firewall and various TCP wrappers turned on. Now run ububtu or windows in the VM.

      Are all my ports now open again? or is the host both firewalling and TCP filtering all the communications?

      THat is should I be thinking of the hosted os as being behing a firewall or NAT router or is it fully exposed to the outside?

      second suppose my hosted OS gets infected. If it launches a network

      • Re:security issues? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Tanktalus ( 794810 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:14PM (#26202337) Journal

        Thus far, my virtual boxes have all been on a private network. I'm not even sure if they see each other, though I've not really tested that. I'm not even really sure how to open up the guests to the public network, though I'm 100% positive that it can be done. It's just that the defaults are all pretty secure.

        That all means that your host is acting as a NAT router (by default anyway) and thus all the firewall that the host has will protect the guest(s).

        Yes, if your guest gets infected, it's inside the firewall. Though, like I said, I'm not sure it can see the other guests, just the host. However, it's fairly easy to solve: turn off the VM, and roll it back to a clean state. I mean, if you're paranoid enough to be worried about such issues, you'll have old states which are known-good to roll back to. However, I've turned off pretty much all of WindowsXP's protections because it's hiding inside my Linux box, behind a cable-router (another NAT). The ability for something to get in and infect it is pretty much nil. Especially as I don't use IE or Outlook inside there (I use kmail for email, and firefox and konqueror on Linux for browsing, so no need) either.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Hatta ( 162192 )

      So has anyone tried it yet? I was going to this weekend, but I got caught up in all sorts of pre-holiday preparations. I'll have plenty of time over the New Year to check it out though.

      There's a whole pile of games that Wine won't play because of one measly little mouse bug [winehq.org]. It will be great to finally have Aliens vs Predator working.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by blackest_k ( 761565 )

        It's looking Good, on ubuntu hardy.

        I Selected Host networking and it's showing up on my Lan. Especially cool since its sharing the wireless network card, thats not so easy before wired connections only could share.

        USB support is greatly improved one area 2.06 was lacking was in support for the built in Webcam on the aspire one (many others too) That is now detected by the guest. As are other devices which were grayed out under 2.06

        There's only a couple of minor things i'm looking to do now. in integrated de

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by Tubal-Cain ( 1289912 ) *

          In integrated desktop mode I'd like to make the windows taskbar and windows look more gnome like and scrap the bottom taskbar for gnome.

          Some poor souls use KDE, you insensitive clod!

          (such as Linus)

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by The MAZZTer ( 911996 )

      It's also on Linux guests but I hear it's still very slow on Linux. Hopefully they will improve it, as well as get DirectX support working soon (AFAIK this should speed up Vista dramatically in a VM, maybe even enough to enable Aero Glass support... I'm not a DirectX expert though so I'm not 100% sure).

      Oh yeah, here's a benchmark [mzzt.net] I ran for the OpenGL support. Not bad at all... it would probably be closer if I had a faster proc (and/or more then one core) and hardware virtualization support.

  • what about performance fall off? (Score:4, Funny)

    by flyingpastor ( 1436913 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:20PM (#26201511)
    Would a 32 bit emulating a 64 be like a fat man in the 200m dash?

  • Great, needed this as of last week.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ehaggis ( 879721 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:21PM (#26201527) Homepage Journal
    I can't justify purchasing a 64 box for the house, but a beefed up 32 running 64 virtually is just the ticket to get SAP on Linux up and running. Merry Christmas to me!

  • here's a howto install Virtualbox 2.1 in Ubuntu Linux:

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1015045

  • > Another useful feature is integrated host based networking, no more fiddling around with network bridges.

    Can anyone explain what this "host based networking" is? And what's wrong with the bridges?

    Thanks.

    • That's what I was thinking. I've been using VMWare and VirtualBox for a long time, and I've never had to "fiddle with network bridges." I've never tried to do anything very complex though, so maybe the networking only works for common setups.

    • Re:Host based networking? (Score:5, Informative)

      by domatic ( 1128127 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:41PM (#26201847)

      It means that the virtual network adapter can get IP connected without resorting to NAT. This was usually done by bridging a physical interface to a tun device and setting that tun device as VirtualBox's network device. Setting up this bridge requires using a script outside of VirtualBox to get everything set up. Now VirtualBox can do it from the GUI with no scripting required. In short, one can dedicate a physical NIC to VirtualBox by bridging it or allow VBox direct access to the host NIC.

      The easy way to do networking with virtuals is to use NAT to pass TCP traffic to the virtual from the host's IP connection. That suffices for web surfing and other apps that don't severely exercise networking but it doesn't work well for things like VPN clients.

    • Bridges tend (in my case(s) anyway) to throw some organic waste material to the fan, if you are using your box connected to one Cisco that is connectod to another one -uplink side that is- thru a trunk encapsulating link. Especially is you need to change anything from defaults. But yes, when they start to work, there is nothing wrong with them.

    • Re:Host based networking? (Score:5, Informative)

      by MBAFK ( 769131 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:45PM (#26201923)

      If you wanted your VM to have an IP and appear as if it is a real machine on the network many people used to have to follow the 100 odd lines of documentation here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/VirtualBox#Networking [ubuntu.com]

      Now they can just start it and it works out of the box.

  • Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by De Lemming ( 227104 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:26PM (#26201589) Homepage

    Another interesting new feature is the experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL. From the manual:

    With this new feature, if an application inside your Windows guest uses 3D features through the OpenGL programming interfaces, these will not be emulated in software (which is slow), but instead VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's 3D hardware.
    This works for all supported host platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris), provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the first place.

    The 3D acceleration currently has the following limitations:
    1. It is only available in Windows XP and 32-bit Vista guests with the Windows Guest Additions installed.
    2. Only OpenGL acceleration is presently available in those guests; Direct3D is not yet supported and will be added in a future release.

    • I thought that sounded good too.

      If this was done right, would that allow it to replace wine? or not really?

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AusIV ( 950840 )
        You'd still need a copy of Windows. It would go a long way to replacing the dual boot, but Wine will still have its place. That said, I'm sure this is better than software rendering, but I have my doubts to the usability of 3D graphics in VirtualBox.

      • no, this is an emulator. Wine Is Not an Emulator. You would have to have a purchased and installed copy of Windows. You would have to load up all of windows, and its services. Wine is an app, that loads just the bare basics needed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ed Avis ( 5917 )

          You would have to have a purchased and installed copy of Windows.

          ...or Reactos [reactos.org].

        • Re:Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL) (Score:4, Insightful)

          by khellendros1984 ( 792761 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @02:08PM (#26203127) Journal
          It always bugs me a bit when people say "Wine Is Not an Emulator". Sure, it's in the name and everything, but from a certain perspective, it *is* an emulator. Wine is a re-implementation of various Windows-based APIs. Another way to put it is that it *emulates* the behavior of those APIs. It's a compatibility layer to allow software from a different OS to run on Linux, just like a hardware emulator allows software designed for other hardware to run on your x86 machine.

          • emulator (Score:3, Funny)

            by rajafarian ( 49150 )

            Another way to put it is that it *emulates* the behavior of those APIs.

            You use that word a lot. I don't think it means what you think it means.

  • Improved snapshots? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by WD ( 96061 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:32PM (#26201705)

    Aside from a clunky GUI, the thing that stood out the most for me about VirtualBox is the abysmal snapshot support. Both VMWare and Parallels allow for a snapshot tree where you can instantly jump to any powered-on machine state that you have saved. VirtualBox, on the other hand, seemed to only support a linear, multiple-level undo.

    Anybody know if any progress has been made in this area?

    • Re:Improved snapshots? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dr_Barnowl ( 709838 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:32PM (#26202589)

      This feature is allegedly in progress.

      I completely agree - I have a pair of mutually-incompatible versions of the same application that won't co-exist on the same Windows machine, so I set up a VBox machine to put them on. I had to clone the base install, about 2GB, rather than just making a snapshot and installing either version on top of that snapshot and snapshotting them. If you want both versions, you have to sacrifice another 2GB of disk space or install one version natively (which isn't exactly convenient - one of the major reasons for having the VMs is that it's a complete pig to install correctly).

      It's not like the virtual disk model is unprepared for it - it does support immutable and delta disks, and uses them when taking snapshots. You are allowed multiple nested snapshot levels. For reasons I don't grok this has not been translated into branching snapshot support.

  • Good Alternative (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TypoNAM ( 695420 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:33PM (#26201709)

    I have found that VirtualBox is a perfect alternative to VMware's expensive Workstation product. Before a friend told me about VirtualBox I was using VMware's Server free product as to how Workstation was meant to be used and not as a server side virtualization solution as VMware expected. So as soon as I checked out VirtualBox I dumped the ever-so-getting bloated Server program suite. I did previously pirate Workstation a couple of years ago before the free Server got released and decided I would try to go legit at that time which made it easy since Server and Workstation were compatible with each other on virtual machine files. As for Workstation product its ~$200 price tag is just way too expensive for my taste.

    Now I'm using VirtualBox and I really do like it a lot. It seems to even be less resource intensive than VMware's offerings. Now the question is has anybody tried, or even if possible, to convert a VMware virtual machine to a VirtualBox machine?

  • I thought VMWare already did that (Score:5, Informative)

    by DeHackEd ( 159723 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:33PM (#26201713) Homepage

    I have an Athlon64 but run a 32 bit OS. I tried running a 64 bit virtual machine using VMWare Server 1.0.x a year or so ago and it worked. The performance was not noticeably poor.

    So... assuming I haven't missed anything too obvious, my response would be "No, vmware is not getting a run for their money." Not today anyways.

  • Network bridge (Score:3, Informative)

    by nighty5 ( 615965 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:34PM (#26201731)

    was the reason why I tossed out Virtual Box.

    It was prone to problems, and became so annoying I ended up buying a license of VMWare.

    There is also one area which is very unstable - OpenBSD support. It crashes the latest versions of OpenBSD, reports out-of-disk errors etc. OpenBSD is definitely more picky on the hardware it runs due to its strong security features, which Virtual Box doesn't appear to implement properly to make it look "real enough"

    Sun has recognised problems with OpenBSD but has said its so far down the important-list it won't bother for some time.

    • For me, Virtualbox often caused kernel panics on boot (host machines run Ubuntu 8.04 LTS). Basically, the system would crash and the caps lock and scroll lock keys would start flashing. At first, it was limited to only one machine, so I suspected that something was wrong with that machine's hardware support. The same thing also happened on one machine that has had perfect hardware support in the past. (logs on both machines indicated a kernel panic caused by something going wrong with the Virtualbox kernel

    • I tossed it because it has such poor support for Win98 guests (no shared folders, or other tools). I run many older OSes as guests, so I'm sticking with VMWare.

  • Memory supported? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sunking2 ( 521698 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:37PM (#26201773)
    Does this mean if I have more than 4G of memory the client will actually be able to use more memory than the client can see? So I can have a full 12G client on a 16G host that only sees/uses 4G of it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ettlz ( 639203 )
      I presume the host must need PAE enabled, either that or VirtualBox somehow manages to supplant or extend the host OS's memory management logic somehow.

    • I doubt it, when you config a VM you assign memory to it, you probably cannot assign more memory than the VirtuaBox sees, and VirtualBox will see just as much as the OS sees.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Marauder2 ( 82448 )

      No, the chunk of memory used by the Virtual Machine still has to be allocated by the Host OS such that the host OS knows to not allocate it to other applications meaning that you'd still face the 4G total limit unless the host OS also understood 64-bit memory space addressing.

      The huge benefit of this is the ability to run 64-bit code with the additional 64-bit wide registers and instructions provided by the AMD64/x86-64 architecture.

      For instance with this feature in VMware Workstation, I was able to test 64

  • Good product, not Enterprise ready yet (Score:4, Informative)

    by digitalhermit ( 113459 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:39PM (#26201801) Homepage

    I've been trying out VirtualBox for a while. VMWare had recently updated to v2.0 and had some annoying problems with the new tomcat based web front-end. It was unusable and drove a lot of people to other options. This was why I'd looked at VirtualBox.

    It is easy to install and runs most OSes as a host. I tested the last two versions on CentOS 5.2 on 64bit and 32bit. The 32bit version running on my Inspiron E1505 laptop had issues with CPU utilization. No matter what was running (or not running) in the guest, it would completely spike the machine to 99% utilization. Fiddling with the CPU virtualization settings and other BIOS features had no effect.

    Anyhoo, VMWare released an update that fixes the Tomcat issues. Xen is running great. Right now I don't have a lot of reason to switch, but VirtualBox does look very promising.

  • VMWare's compatibility list, and the fact it's been supporting 64-bit for a half of a decade doesn't make VBox any better-- for its half-an-hour-old-now support of 64-bit processors. The management interface isn't there, and the add-in bits aren't there, either. It's way late, like most other Sun promises.

    Is it ok for hackers and people that want personal use? Probably. But VMWare, Parallels, Citrix/Xen, mainstream distro Xen, and a bunch of others still have lots of maturity where VBox is what always happe

  • Virtualbox is superior to VMware (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sammydee ( 930754 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {todhsals+samdavies}> on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:43PM (#26201877) Homepage

    Virtualbox doesn't just give VMware a run for it's money, it's considerably superior in many respects:

    - It's open source
    - The gtk interface is at least as good as vmware's gui
    - It's considerably faster on my system (no hardware virtualisation), windows xp boots in about half the time in virtualbox than in vmware, and applications generally open/run much more snappily.
    - It's considerably more stable (on linux) than vmware is. In my experience vmware crashed about 30% of the times I used it, I even got a total system crash once that needed a hard reset (I think due to problems with compiz?). It uses quite an intrusive kernel module that creates a lot of latency in the kernel. This manifests itself mostly as skipping audio when audio is playing. Virtualbox has none of these problems, it's rock solid stable and doesn't hog the cpu like vmware does.
    - Virtualbox seems to need less ram than vmware, I only have 1GB of ram in my laptop and swapping was unbearable with firefox and vmware open, yet firefox, virtualbox AND other applications can coexist fine with only limited swapping.

    That's all the advantages I can think of of the top of my head, the only disadvantage I can see is that vmware supports USB devices whereas the free version of virtualbox doesn't. Other than that, virtualbox is just better all round.

    Sam

    • Re:Virtualbox is superior to VMware (Score:5, Informative)

      by oever ( 233119 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @12:58PM (#26202111) Homepage

      The VirtualBox GUI is written with Qt [ubuntu.com], not GTK.

      I'm using VirtualBox to run 32 bit Windows XP on a 64-bit Linux machine. VirtualBox 2.0 runs really well for me. I'm glad I can use an open-source package for this.

    • Re:Virtualbox is superior to VMware (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mc900ftjesus ( 671151 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:12PM (#26202289)

      My anecdotal evidence disagrees with all of your anecdotal evidence. I have never had a problem with VMWare stability, RAM usage, CPU utilization or interface.

      But really, your entire argument is crap the second you use the term "snapily" or "snappy." If you're angry at VMWare, and you install VirtualBox, your first impression will be that it's so much "snappier" even if the two are neck and neck. This is a stupid term, stop using it.

      Sorry, but your points are pretty worthless because you don't back any of it up, you just cry "unstable" and we're all supposed to agree with your blind rage.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by MMC Monster ( 602931 )

        "Snappy" is a fine term to use. I read it all the time in the High Definition Theater magazine reviews.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 )

        But really, your entire argument is crap the second you use the term "snapily" or "snappy." If you're angry at VMWare, and you install VirtualBox, your first impression will be that it's so much "snappier" even if the two are neck and neck. This is a stupid term, stop using it.

        It's true that responsiveness is difficult to evaluate objectively without actually measuring it, but it's still a significant element of a good user experience.

  • I've been using VMWare for the last couple years in in a development environment. We don't run any VMWare stuff in our production datacenter, so for my uses it's mostly been to run pre-packaged VMs or making my own to run an older version of Windows or do something in linux.

    However, after upgrading to the latest VMWare server, I REALLY hate the new server interface. It has been nothing but a pain to work with. I also recently tried VirtualBox on my Ubuntu laptop at home. It seemed very slick - fast,

  • Headline should read "VirtualBox 2.1 Supports 64 Bit VM in 32 Bit Host Operating System".

    Big difference between a 32-bit host and a 32-bit host OS.

  • "Giving VMWare a run for their money" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by btarval ( 874919 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:05PM (#26202205)

    That's the truth. Sun, Xen and even Microsoft are giving VMWare a run for their money nowadays.

    There's one interesting thing which has struck me, that I haven't seen any comments on. Namely, that VMWare is stuck competing between Microsoft on the one hand, and several Open Source projects on the other (with some of the Open Source projects having serious financial backing).

    Being positioned between Microsoft and Open Source generally hasn't been a good spot to be in (indeed, has anyone succeeded here?). So I have to wonder how VMWare is going to stand up in the future?

    I've been a big fan of VMWare in the past, as it has saved my butt more than once. However, now I find myself using Xen more, and seriously considering Sun's offerings.

    To VMWare's credit, they have arguably the best person in the world for the job as CEO (at least on paper). Some might remember Paul Maritz as being one of the top people from Microsoft, as well as having led Microsoft's original *NIX strategy (I.e. Xenix). So if there's anyone who can compete there, it is him.

    But still, it is not an enviable position to be in, and it makes me wonder how they are going to compete in the long term? Especially since, from a technology basis, the Open Source efforts are arguably better.

    Anyone care to add some insightful comments on this? The only way that I can see VMWare winning is if everyone else screws up. While that's possible, there's a lot of money at stake in the Virtualization field, and I think the odds of that happening are low.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MistrBlank ( 1183469 )

      VMWare jumped way ahead of the pack in terms of "basic" VM management early. That's why they're a big name now.

      Now their "basic" package isn't doing much more than many of the Open Source projects and Microsoft offering (which is why some of their offerings like VMWare Server have become free). What VMWare has now is a large bundle of enterprise products for managing VMs and their data across the network and across your SAN.

      If you want to delve into Virtualization for resume fodder, your best bet is to st

    • even Microsoft

      Although, somewhat spookily, you really have to mess around with kernel options and whatnot to get Ubuntu to even boot on MS Virtual PC, whereas it just runs as-is on VirtualBox (and I presume on VMWare too).

      I've heard that other distros run fine ; what a shame that the most threatening^W popular distro doesn't.

      Ah well. VirtualBox is really rather nice, especially for something that is so generously licensed - their no-fee "personal" license runs along the lines of "use it for anything you like, even runnin

    • Oracle seems to be doing fine.

    • Re:"Giving VMWare a run for their money" (Score:5, Informative)

      by swb ( 14022 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @03:26PM (#26204045)

      VMWare has the management tools and the gee-whiz features in their enterprise virtualization (bare-metal hypervisor) kit.

      The management tools matter when you start getting into multi-host clusters. Look up "DRS" and "Vmotion" and then start thinking about racks of servers and virtual machines that basically get rearranged to balance the hardware loads automatically -- yes, that's right, running VMs moving across hardware platforms with virtually no noticeable downtime (I think we've clocked it around 1-2ms of interruption, which you can barely notice watching a real-time animation loop and can't notice as, say, a SQL client or Outlook user). I've heard rumors from insiders that they may even do a kind of real-time high availability where they utilize the VMotion technology to mirror the same guest OS on a second host simultaneously.

      They also have other management tools for HA, a desktop broker (ie, automagic desktop VM creation), etc.

      IMHO their big challenge isn't more huge-enterprise features (although that's where the margins are) its capturing enough of the SMB space (the 3-4+ server shops run by consultants or do-it-all single admins) so that as these entities grow they move into the higher end product. This is why ESXi is now free-as-in-beer.

      Once they figure out how to efficiently virtualize stuff like USB, SATA & graphics acceleration, we'll probably all start installing a "desktop" ESX on our machines first and then add OSes as we see fit. With the right windowing interface integrated into hypervisor management, it may really stop mattering what OS you're running.

    • Re:"Giving VMWare a run for their money" (Score:5, Informative)

      by arkhan_jg ( 618674 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @04:40PM (#26204795)

      ESX. Bare-metal hypervisors beat the absolute pants off linux or windows hosted hypervisors by any metric you can think of. Plus the management interface that lets you treat an entire bank of servers as a resource pool, start guest VMs on any of the pool, migrate them between hardware without powering off, and bringing VMs up automatically on another box in the pool if a server has a hardware fault - these are all areas that xen and virtualbox can't compete.

      For localised single-server hossting, or workstation hosting? Sure, vmware may be in trouble. But enterprise-grade hosting with proper SANs and load-balancing physical servers hosting dozens or hundreds of guest VMs, where VMWare makes most of their money? I'm not aware of anything that competes right now.

  • Solaris Containers on Sparc and VirtualBox x86 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by blastwave ( 757518 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @01:24PM (#26202487)
    Sun has taken a beating lately, like everyone has, but when I look at its massively multicore Niagara and Victoria Falls systems I see real viable breakthrough in the area of massively parallel computing. With Solaris Containers on Sparc I can take an old production Solaris 8 ( or 9 ) server and literally drop it into a single core of a Niagara machine and then make the old box vanish into a puff of 1U smoke without losing anything. Heck, the new machines will run 256 threads at the same time with no time slice issues. With VirtualBox on x86 we can now park almost anything from the x86 world into a SunFire x4440 ( 16 core AMD Opteron slayer ) in 2U of rack space. The theory, that I would love to test in practice, is that you can make four racks of older gear vanish into 6U of rack space with the SunFire x4440 ( AMD Opteron based ) and the Sun T5440 Server ( 32 core and eight floating-point units per processor ). That would be 256 simultaneous threads all running in one server and 16 cores of AMD Opteron in the other. And that means Linux/Windows and Solaris all running in two machines. I may be wrong but Sun has a hell of a grip on the future multi-threaded world.

  • ...the glaring problem that I have with VirtualBox, VM management.

    I love that they use XML for defining a system. I love that they have a virtual disk manager. But they do not have a process for bundling both together if I have a virtual machine with a disk image that I am dedicating to it.

    The end result is migrating a VM or even upgrading an install with non-default settings is a huge hassle. And the default puts VM-client xml files in a different location than their virtual disk images.

    In VMWare, I jus

  • Linux USB support (Score:2, Informative)

    by Howard Beale ( 92386 )

    have they resolved the pain in the ass issue with using USB on Linux Hosts?

  • QEMU (Score:2, Funny)

    by morgauo ( 1303341 )

    As far as I can tell, it's just a free as in beer version of free as in speech + beer QEMU.

    How long before it comes out that virtualbox actually is QEMU, with a Sun sticker on it?

  • Title misleading (Score:4, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Monday December 22, 2008 @04:05PM (#26204453) Homepage Journal

    The title of this post is rather misleading. It implies VirtualBox can run a virtualized 64 bit machine on a 32 bit processor and VMWare cannot. Neither of these are true. It can now host a 64 bit guest VM when the host OS is 32 bits.

    Support for 64 bit VM's under 32 bit host OS's has been standard in VMWare's entire line ever since they included 64 bit guest support. Even the service console through ESX 3.5 is a 32 bit VM (Though it's not really fair to call it the "Host" OS)

    AFAIK, virtualizing 64 bit guests does still require Intel VT or AMD Pacifica support on the CPU regardless on all products that support 64 bit guests.

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