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shinji · Aug 12, 2007, 04:42 PM

Seen this? http://www.virtualbox.org/ - thinking about ditching parallels and switching to that or vmware.

Anyone move from Parallels to virtualbox or vmware and felt like it was the right decision? And were there XP re-activation issues when you tested either?

besson3c · Aug 12, 2007, 04:49 PM

I believe virtualbox is based on Qemu, which may also be worthy of your consideration.

I guess it comes down to what sorts of features you need - the Unity thing, copy and paste between platforms, disk sharing, how networking is handled, and price...

I would imagine that as far as performance goes, they are all pretty similar. Are you looking for performance, utility, or a mix of both? Which is more important to you?

shinji · Aug 12, 2007, 04:56 PM

I don't really like the unity/coherence stuff. I only use it for checking out sites in IE and one somewhat lightweight app I use that depends on the MS JVM (I know it is outdated and MS is dropping support for it, but I have to use this app). Don't need to share any files between the guest OS and OS X.

I find Parallels to be a little buggy and clunky-feeling- you think the performance would be more or less the same though with all of these?

besson3c · 07:21 PM

Originally Posted by shinji

I don't really like the unity/coherence stuff. I only use it for checking out sites in IE and one somewhat lightweight app I use that depends on the MS JVM (I know it is outdated and MS is dropping support for it, but I have to use this app). Don't need to share any files between the guest OS and OS X.

I find Parallels to be a little buggy and clunky-feeling- you think the performance would be more or less the same though with all of these?

I don't know for certain, but your needs sound very basic. Personally, if it were me I wouldn't spend money on a VM (and Windows on top of that) just for that when there are functional open source equivalents.

MacosNerd · Aug 12, 2007, 07:16 PM

I dumped Parallels in favor of Fusion. I found Parallels to be too buggy and slowed down during normal stuff, like opening up an explorer window.

Personally I'm no fan of coherence/unity myself so I cannot answer which feature (unity or coherence) works better since I don't use it.

shinji · Aug 13, 2007, 12:30 AM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I don't know for certain, but your needs sound very basic. Personally, if it were me I wouldn't spend money on a VM (and Windows on top of that) just for that when there are functional open source equivalents.

Yeah that was why I was curious about Virtualbox- I searched here but there are only 3 threads about it and really just mentioned in passing. Looks like the basic version is free for now while it's in beta.

I already have an OEM copy of XP, and I don't mind buying VMware...just wondering how much benefit there really is to switching to VMware...may give it a shot.

MacosNerd · Aug 13, 2007, 08:13 AM

Originally Posted by shinji

.just wondering how much benefit there really is to switching to VMware...may give it a shot.

I believe they still have a trial version of Fusion. Try it before you buy it.

tavin64 · Aug 13, 2007, 10:57 AM

I have virtualbox on my ubuntu partition on my macbook. It is very fast (faster than vmware or parallels in osx) under linux but I think the OSX variant is still very beta. In Ubuntu you can make the installation of XP seamless into gnome to where you actually have the start menu within ubuntu and it just loads whatever app you want without the need to boot the virtual machine.

besson3c · Oct 22, 2007, 12:24 PM

I'm running VirtualBox right now, and I must say that I'm thoroughly impressed.

It actually runs better than VMWare for me (this may be the case because it requires less RAM), and there is definitely enough functionality provided (including USB support) that I see little reason to shell out for VMWare or Parallels.

About the only features missing are Direct3D support, and Unity (in the case of VMWare Fusion).

chefpastry · Oct 24, 2007, 09:11 AM

I tried Fusion and found it slower than Parallels. Also, trying to play video in OS X from the virtual machine's drive mounted via SMB would stutter. Doing the same with Parallels produces a smooth playing video.

Lastly, I typically keep my machine and the virtual machine running 24/7. Fusion would lose it's connection with the bootcamp partition and shut down the virtual machine for no apparent reason after running for several days. The only way to get the virtual machine running again is to reboot. A real pain. Parallels just runs and runs and runs.

I avoid all the unity/coherence features, so I can't really comment on them.

I've never tried Virtual Box.

besson3c · Oct 24, 2007, 09:16 AM

What do you dislike about VirtualBox?

ghostdawg · Oct 24, 2007, 11:11 AM

I use virtualbox with my pc linux debian setup and really like it better than the others. I haven't tried it on OS X.

besson3c · Oct 24, 2007, 01:48 PM

Originally Posted by ghostdawg

I use virtualbox with my pc linux debian setup and really like it better than the others. I haven't tried it on OS X.

It isn't as far along in OS X, and some features like the seamless window thing (whatever it is called) aren't in the OS X version.

I wish there was a way to just run Linux apps as Linux apps via X11 in OS X for these sorts of things, and that the X11 environment was better integrated.