VMWare vs VirtualBox ...what I should use [closed]
what I should using to work with linux on windows ... I don't know ! ... but I tried VirtualBox and VmWare what's the differents and which are the feutures
Solution 1:
Im using a bit of both (VMWare at work, as it's the software that's used the most in the company I work for ; and VirtualBox at Home), and, to develop, I don't see much of a difference : both do what I need, which is provide a Virtual Machine, independant of the host system.
If you are going to use it for some production system, maybe VMWare might be a safest bet, at least for support -- and it's more widely used in the industry, I'd say.
If you want free software, VirtualBox OSE is the way to go.
Edit after comment, to clarify : by "free", I mean "libre" : both VMWare server/player and VirtualBox are free (as in "cost not money"), but only VirtualBox OSE is free as in "libre" -- see Open Source VirtualBox and other editions
One thing that was not so good with VirtualBox was that it didn't support VM with several CPU ; that's possible, now, with versions 3.x, if I remember correctly.
You might also be interested by a couple of questions / asnwers about that subject, like, for instance :
- Benchmark: VMware vs Virtualbox
- Which is the best VM program for a programmer?
You also have several other possibilities, like QEMU, for instance -- but those are less known/used ; so maybe not that useful if you want to use a VM for work and share it with co-workers...
Solution 2:
In my experience I have found VMWare to be a brilliant virtualization tool. I have used the workstation version and the server version, it's worked flawlessly for me, however; I do find that VMWare is not as simple to get going as VirtualBox is, if you want the free (server) edition you will be running a little excess overhead to manage the services component.
On the other hand I've now switched to VirtualBox on OSX and it's been everything I've ever needed. It works perfectly for a development environment and allows assigning USB ports exclusively to a machine or based on vendor codes (filters).
VirtualBox also contains a snapshot feature that is only part of the workstation (retail) version of VMWare.
In summary, if you want a dedicated machine to handle your virtualization, go with VMWare, but if it's for development purposes on your local machine, I'd definately go with VirtualBox.
Solution 3:
I've used VMWare with great success for developing drivers where you need to run checked OS builds and debug & single-step kernel code. I think that is its major strength. I use VirtualBox for hosting assorted OSes holding software I don't want to install on my work PCs (like old versions of browsers and applications, etc).
VirtualBox also starts up much faster than VMWare in my experience...