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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Alternative Operating Systems > Virtualbox is better than VMWare Fusion

Virtualbox is better than VMWare Fusion
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besson3c
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Nov 10, 2009, 12:58 AM
 
As far as I'm concerned...

- Remote console support via VNC
- command line tools (lacking in Fusion) making this possible to run on a server
- up to 32 CPUs
- 3D acceleration
- SCSI and IDE based storage
- USB 2 support
- shared folders
- Seamless mode (like Unity)

I know that Fusion does all of this too minus the CLI tools, but I can't think of anything else I need for a Desktop VM host (I don't use Boot Camp). Virtualbox is also free and very fast, supported by Sun, and updated frequently. Perhaps this feature set wasn't this extensive the last time several of you tried it out?

Why aren't more people using it? Is it a well kept secret? What makes it much better for me are the CLI tools, I don't know why Fusion is so crippled this way since they decided to remove diskTool (which I'm assuming was a variant of their vdiskmanager utility)

Virtualbox will also read your VMWare .vmdk files, although you'll have to add the SCSI controller by clicking a checkbox in the prefs if your Fusion disk is SCSI. This is working fine for me.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 01:01 AM
 
Another downside, some users are reporting problems with the Virtualbox/KVM kernel extension in the 64 bit Snow Leopard kernel (I haven't tried this myself)
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 01:49 AM
 
Correction, it looks like 64 bit Virtualbox is supported in versions 3.0.6 and higher. I'm trying it now and am having some screen redraw problems that I didn't have with the 32 bit kernel, for whatever reason.

Sorry for posting this to the wrong forum.
     
Chuckit
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Nov 10, 2009, 02:38 PM
 
Last I checked, Fusion can easily run off a Boot Camp partition and Virtualbox cannot, which is a nuisance for me.
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besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 02:45 PM
 
Yeah, the Boot Camp thing is a legitimate downside. I don't use Boot Camp personally, but I hear ya. I haven't seen any up-to-date benchmarks, but I wouldn't be surprised if Virtualbox is a little faster though.
     
mduell
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Nov 10, 2009, 05:07 PM
 
The inability to easily run off a disk partition is fatal. I need a way to boot Windows on bare metal for all the times when virtualization fails me (modern games, playing HD video, etc) and I'm not going to keep two instances of Windows around. 32 CPUs and SCSI support are typical freetard drooling points while usability falls to the wayside.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 05:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
The inability to easily run off a disk partition is fatal. I need a way to boot Windows on bare metal for all the times when virtualization fails me (modern games, playing HD video, etc) and I'm not going to keep two instances of Windows around. 32 CPUs and SCSI support are typical freetard drooling points while usability falls to the wayside.
I don't think that's really fair criticism. Virtualbox is not a Mac only product, it's a product supported by Sun for all platforms, I'm sure their own having the greatest weight. If you want to criticize lack of Boot Camp support you'd have to criticize VLC, Firefox, and all other cross platform products for not catering to some Mac specific feature. When you get to the bottom of it it usually involves a lack of resources and a sense of priorities. I doubt that this is a priority for Sun. My point is that a usability based criticism would be better targeted if the developers were trying to enhance and optimize usability on each platform.

I agree, however, that through the eyes of Boot Camp users this amounts to a points deduction. That being said, if you really want to keep your Boot Camp and Windows VM in sync it would actually be very easy to write a script to mount the image and rsync between both partitions.
     
alex_kac
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Nov 10, 2009, 05:28 PM
 
one big beef with VirtualBox is that its USB support is not as good as Fusions. Try to update a flashROM on a device via USB on Fusion and VirtualBox. Works on Fusion - iffy on VirtualBox.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 05:57 PM
 
I didn't know that! What version did you last try, alex? Virtualbox gets frequent updates, and the change logs for each release look pretty extensive.
     
alex_kac
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Nov 10, 2009, 05:59 PM
 
Running a VM in a business environment where I can't shut down the VM for constant stream of updates. Even with Fusion I only update when I must. That's the thing: Fusion has been rock solid and unwavering in its ability to do what I demand of it and VirtualBox wasn't. Neither was Parallels for that matter.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 06:21 PM
 
Originally Posted by alex_kac View Post
Running a VM in a business environment where I can't shut down the VM for constant stream of updates. Even with Fusion I only update when I must. That's the thing: Fusion has been rock solid and unwavering in its ability to do what I demand of it and VirtualBox wasn't. Neither was Parallels for that matter.

I see... I assumed that anybody running Fusion wouldn't be running it in a business environment, since it's not really a server product particularly suitable for a server, although I guess the VNC console support helps a great deal with accessing VMs you have already started in the GUI. Have I been living under a rock, or is this a fairly recent addition?
     
alex_kac
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Nov 10, 2009, 06:23 PM
 
Who said server? Its doing constant compiles for BlackBerry and Winmobile projects + other stuff that gets connected to by others.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 06:26 PM
 
Ahhh.. faulty assumption on my part, sorry.
     
mduell
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Nov 10, 2009, 08:38 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
I don't think that's really fair criticism. Virtualbox is not a Mac only product, it's a product supported by Sun for all platforms, I'm sure their own having the greatest weight. If you want to criticize lack of Boot Camp support you'd have to criticize VLC, Firefox, and all other cross platform products for not catering to some Mac specific feature. When you get to the bottom of it it usually involves a lack of resources and a sense of priorities. I doubt that this is a priority for Sun. My point is that a usability based criticism would be better targeted if the developers were trying to enhance and optimize usability on each platform.

I agree, however, that through the eyes of Boot Camp users this amounts to a points deduction. That being said, if you really want to keep your Boot Camp and Windows VM in sync it would actually be very easy to write a script to mount the image and rsync between both partitions.
There's nothing Mac specific about my comments. I have the same issue when virtualizing with Linux or even Windows hosts. The need to boot from bare disk is in no way unique to OS X.

Sure it's possible to synchronize userdata, but that's not the point since it's usually on another partition anyway. Multiple instances of Windows means having to update all of them every patch day. And the software installed in them.
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 09:24 PM
 
How can one boot with a non-Boot Camp bare disk in Fusion or any other virtualization product? Fusion only allows me to select an image to use as a disk.

I generally think this is a bad idea. For starters, a virus or something you get on your PC that is allowed access to this separate partition will taint your VM, whereas with a destroyed image you won't be able to boot your VM at all. Also, you lose the portability advantages of having a VM image in a single file (or segments), the ability to shrink and grow images, compress them, save disk space by using sparse images, etc.

What you are describing sounds more like FreeBSD's jails system, which is terrific for servers, in many ways even more efficient than running VMs if using the same underlying kernel version is not a deal breaker for you.

On a slightly different topic, what would stop a virus from checking for an NTFS/HFS+ partition depending on whether you were booted into OS X or Windows and tainting both OSes? Have any viruses gotten this clever yet?
     
lpkmckenna
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Nov 10, 2009, 10:27 PM
 
Anil Dash shows how to use your BootCamp partition with VirtualBox: How to run Windows 7 under Mac OS X 10.6 for free - Anil Dash

For myself, if I'm gonna spend $200 on Windows 7, spending another $70 for Fusion or Parallels is peanuts. Right now, I'm still using the Windows 7 pre-release (because it's free) and VirtualBox (because it's free).
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 10, 2009, 10:48 PM
 
Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
Anil Dash shows how to use your BootCamp partition with VirtualBox: How to run Windows 7 under Mac OS X 10.6 for free - Anil Dash

For myself, if I'm gonna spend $200 on Windows 7, spending another $70 for Fusion or Parallels is peanuts. Right now, I'm still using the Windows 7 pre-release (because it's free) and VirtualBox (because it's free).

That's a very cool approach, but it's also a one way ticket. Once you create the VMDK from the Boot Camp partition you cannot continue to write to this image within Boot Camp.

I do dig all of the command line VirtualBox options though, there are a ton of them. You could, for instance, script taking snapshots or clones, script taking screenshots, or even record videos to a file, as well as start and stop VMs and all of the other usual stuff one would expect. It looks like there is an even more extensive set of options than there is in VMWare Server.
     
lpkmckenna
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Nov 10, 2009, 11:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
That's a very cool approach, but it's also a one way ticket. Once you create the VMDK from the Boot Camp partition you cannot continue to write to this image within Boot Camp.
Oh, that's a show-stopper. I guess I won't bother trying it.
     
ghporter
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Nov 11, 2009, 11:41 AM
 
Does that mean that your VM won't be kept up to date when you use it? Or merely that any changes you make while using the VM won't be reflected when you boot into Windows? That makes a difference to me.

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Nov 11, 2009, 11:45 AM
 
One is basically imaging their physical drive Windows install to a virtual machine, much like Fusion can "import" your BC partition and you will then have a clone of your BC Windows but running wholly in a VM. All changes, updates or app installs would apply to the VM, be it Fusion or VirtualBox, not the original partition.
     
ghporter
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Nov 11, 2009, 01:46 PM
 
That would mean having to apply patches and updates twice then. Not a killer, but definitely a pain. Actually using the disk image rather than creating a VM from it was an issue for me with Parallels though; trying to apply updates and patches through Parallels often goobered the disk image, making it require multiple attempts to start when actually booting to the disk image.

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besson3c  (op)
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Nov 11, 2009, 02:31 PM
 
ghporter: one has to be careful when using disk images and switching between different hosts than they are using the right HD driver. VMWare defaults to either a LSILogic or BusLogic SCSI controller while others default to IDE. When you switch between SCSI and IDE problems can ensure.
     
ghporter
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Nov 11, 2009, 04:26 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
ghporter: one has to be careful when using disk images and switching between different hosts than they are using the right HD driver. VMWare defaults to either a LSILogic or BusLogic SCSI controller while others default to IDE. When you switch between SCSI and IDE problems can ensure.
So I learned. I could use anything in the disk image (run programs, use and change settings, etc.) but any MS updates would undoubtedly use the wrong driver and bork the image. It only took me a couple of tries to figure this out and not do it again. But this is something that really needs user attention, and it certainly wasn't in the Parallels manual.

I'd suggest caution in using any VM app that can directly affect the disk image. It is barely possible that VirtualBox's image use was written to avoid this issue. I doubt it though.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 11, 2009, 04:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by ghporter View Post
So I learned. I could use anything in the disk image (run programs, use and change settings, etc.) but any MS updates would undoubtedly use the wrong driver and bork the image. It only took me a couple of tries to figure this out and not do it again. But this is something that really needs user attention, and it certainly wasn't in the Parallels manual.

I'd suggest caution in using any VM app that can directly affect the disk image. It is barely possible that VirtualBox's image use was written to avoid this issue. I doubt it though.
This sounds like a different problem then. Nothing that goes on in your guest should affect the kind of disk being presented to the guest by the host.
     
mduell
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Nov 11, 2009, 08:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
How can one boot with a non-Boot Camp bare disk in Fusion or any other virtualization product? Fusion only allows me to select an image to use as a disk.
I don't know about Fusion (I used Parallels), but in the free VMware on Windows I could use any volume I wanted as the root for my VM. I'm not worried about viruses.
     
ghporter
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Nov 11, 2009, 11:10 PM
 
Originally Posted by besson3c View Post
This sounds like a different problem then. Nothing that goes on in your guest should affect the kind of disk being presented to the guest by the host.
Unless the guest (Parallels actually uses the disk image, meaning that they write a different boot option in XP's startup files and everyting) actually writes to the image instead of to a virtual image. The convenience of emulating your "real" installation has a price; Parallels uses its own drivers to write to the image, which is where the screw ups come in. Most of these updates require a restart, but Parallels did (this was v2) a VM restart and thus didn't flush caches, etc. on the real image.

Glenn -----OTR/L, MOT, Tx
     
shifuimam
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Nov 18, 2009, 08:22 PM
 
Does VMWare Fusion have fully portable VMs? This is one of my biggest complaints about VBox - you can't just put a VM on a thumb drive and boot it from another VBox installation (unless this changed with a recent software update; I don't know). I love that about VMWare (the Windows version; I have no experience with Fusion).
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Andy8
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Nov 18, 2009, 08:44 PM
 
Originally Posted by shifuimam View Post
Does VMWare Fusion have fully portable VMs? This is one of my biggest complaints about VBox - you can't just put a VM on a thumb drive and boot it from another VBox installation (unless this changed with a recent software update; I don't know). I love that about VMWare (the Windows version; I have no experience with Fusion).
The VM that Fusion uses seems to the self contained, you can select the location from just about anywhere, although I have not yet tried from a thumb drive, I have moved my VM between hardware without a drama, when you first launch Fusion you can point it to where your VM is hiding
     
besson3c  (op)
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Nov 18, 2009, 09:30 PM
 
I think all VM products have fully portable disk images. Which ones don't? That's kind of the major upside/selling point of virtualization in the first place, unless I'm misunderstanding what is being said...
     
   
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