VirtualBox

Last night, I tried installing Sun's Virtualbox in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope. Virtual box was very similar to VMWARE in its configuration. I installed Windows Vista in Virtualbox and wanted to check its performance. I allocated 20GB dynamic diskspace for the VDI (virtual disk image) file, 700 MB for RAM and the installation of Vista went without even a single glitch.

All my hardware devices (including Audio) worked perfectly. Initially USB didn't work as Virtualbox 2.2 (that comes with Ubuntu) didn't have USB support. I then downloaded Virtualbox 3.0 from their website. After installing it, all my USB devices started working. Internet connection was automatically configured using NAT placing my Ubuntu's ethernet IP as Gateway. I did nothing!! I remember i was able to copy text back and forth between the native OS and virtual OS in VMWare. I wasn't able to do that in Virtualbox.

I started my career installing and configuring VMWare workstation. I felt its a superb piece of software that time. But after using Sun's Virtualbox, I couldn't stop my excitement. Performance of both the native OS and virtual OS was wonderful. Its much much much better than VMWare. Its so good to see the rapid development of free software and the shape its taking these days. It feels much better to live with it.