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which is the best free virtualization software?
techidave:
I have been looking at three of the more popular free virtualization programs, VMWare, VirtualBox, VirtualPC 2007. Since they all appear to have similar features, i was wanting to get some thoughts such as ease of use, features, etc., as I am getting ready to do this on a Windows machine. At the present moment, I would like to use XP Pro as the default OS and then run Vista, 7, 2000, 98 and maybe 95 too. The last 3 would be for kicks more than anything else. I think VirtualBox is the only one that run Linux virtually and that would be an option to run to.
The only experience I have is with VirtualBox on Snow Leopard trying to run Windows XP virtually. It had some issues that I couldn't figure out so we went out and bought Parallels for Macs and the problems ended.
Some of you are way more experienced than me with this and wondered what your thoughts were.
thanks,
Dave
KynloStephen66515:
VMWare is possibly the most supported, and definatly the most improved VM around IMHO.
It would be my reccomendation to go with that as you can run pretty much ANY OS in VMWare.
Its simple to use, more features than you will use, and is very very stable.
techidave:
on a slightly different note, is there anything that will allow you to run the Mac OS X on a Windows machine?
Does VMWare's Vcenter converter work like it says it does? To convert Win7 to a virtual?
Carol Haynes:
There are various Mac VM ports - the problem is getting the source files and other necessary images that aren't for sale. I tried to do this a while ago out of curiosity and in the end I gave up as it was complicated and time consuming to do all the necessary messing about and the results seemed at best flaky.
It has to be said it is also illegal - if you believe Apple's lawyers.
MilesAhead:
Tangentially, you can often get good advice getting the VM set up on W7 from this subforum:
http://www.sevenforums.com/virtualization/
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