visnum

When one door closes, another opens.

VirtualBox

January 18th, 2008 by Osman S Borutecene

I decided to try VirtualBox.

I installed it on my notebook which is running Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) via apt-get. The only thing you have to do after installing via apt-get is to open user administration and add yourself to the group virtualbox so that your user can have permission to use some parts of the software which belongs to VirtualBox user.

That is, when you are on a Gutsy Gibbon host, setting up and using VirtualBox is much easier than installing and debugging VMWare (I mean both player and the workstation). In that sense, VirtualBox feels like much lighter than VMWare.

One drawback is the Host Key preference. On VMWare, whenever you hit Ctrl+Alt, focus comes back to the host machine. On VirtualBox, there are no key combinations but only one key to do that. Moreover, your chances are limited with Shift, Alt and Ctrl keys. You can only decide which one of them you want to use, that is whether the one on the left of your keyboard or the right. The default setting was Ctrl on the right which is not present on my notebook’s keyboard. So I had to wait for the virtual machine to finish its business and turned it off and only after that I could go and change this Host Key setting. Even then, the phrase “Right Ctrl” is misleading. It makes you feel that you have to hit Right Arrow key + Ctrl. Anyway, now I’ve set it up for Ctrl on the left. Because this is the key I use least. On that point, I realized that I use both Shift keys very often. I use the one on the left for capitalization and the one on the right for symbols like /, (, %, … which usually stay above numeric keys.

Anyway, I tried two guest operating systems. First one is Debian Etch and the second one is Windows XP Proffessional with SP2. I would try Vista too if I had a license for it. Both of them worked much better than they had on VMWare. For the memory part, I tried Etch with 256mb and Xp with 192mb. Right now, for another testing purpose, I am writing this post from within the virtual Xp, using Internet Explorer 6.

Briefly, I can say that VirtualBox comes with much less clutter than VMWare. Of course, capabilities they offer differs and I am in no way an expert in virtualization. Take this post as the opinion of an ordinary PC user who likes to mess around virtual machines.

Posted in Uncategorized, Virtualization |

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