Oracle VM VirtualBox is a free, open source solution forrunning other operating systems virtually on your PC.
With Oracle VM VirtualBox, you can install any version of an operating system, such as Linux, Solaris, and other versions of Windows (as long as you have the original installation files, of course) and run them within your current version of Windows. The first thing you notice about Oracle VM VirtualBox is that it's extremely easy to setup and use. Oracle VM VirtualBox holds your hand through the whole process so you never feel out of your depth.
Integration with your native environment is extremely impressive. Oracle VM VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as 'shared folders', which can then be accessed from within the operating system you're running in Oracle VM VirtualBox. In addition, connecting USB devices is simple - VirtualBox automatically detects new devices and asks you if you wish to use them. Unfortunately, there is no drag-and-drop function from your native desktop into VirtualBox but considering it's free, you really can't complain.
If you don't want to pay for commercial solutions and require a virtual OS for generally minor usage, Oracle VM VirtualBox is more than enough.
Languages:
English
Recent changes in Oracle VM VirtualBox:
- Following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, the product is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox and all references were changed without impacting compatibility
- Experimental support for Mac OS X guests (see the manual for more information)
- Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)
- Page Fusion automatically de-duplicates RAM when running similar VMs thereby increasing capacity. Currently supported for Windows guests on 64-bit hosts (see the manual for more information)
- CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only) (see the manual for more information)
- New Hypervisor features: with both VT-x/AMD-V on 64-bit hosts, using large pages can improve performance (see the manual for more information); also, on VT-x, unrestricted guest execution is now supported (if nested paging is enabled with VT-x, real mode and protected mode without paging code runs faster, which mainly speeds up guest OS booting)
- Support for deleting snapshots while the VM is running
- Support for multi-monitor guest setups in the GUI for Windows guests
OS requirements for Oracle VM VirtualBox:
- OS: Win2000/NT/XP/2003/Vista/7
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