I had downloaded and tried VirtualBox a few months back (actually pre-Leopard), but it didn't work for me at all..
VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, and OpenSolaris also, but I only
wanted to see it on Mac.
I had tried installing Knoppix but it just wasn't coooperating so I put it
aside for another day. Recently I downloaded 1.5.51 and tried again; this
time it all went smoothly.

Emboldened by this success, I decided to try something more challenging:
SCO 5.0.7, which Parallels has so far failed to achieve and VMware managed
only without networking. Alas, VirtualBox wasn't up to the task either:
the SCO install crashed and brought down VirtualBox with it.

Oh well.. I don't need that. The Knoppix install shows that it works,
and gives me enough to check out the features.. which are admittedly
minimal, but are also sufficient: you can create a virtual machine with
dynamic hard drives, up to four ethernet adapters, shared folders,
and snapshots.. what else do you need?

Well, how about being able to send the screen somewhere else? VirtualBox
apparently can do that too: you connect to it with an RDP client and there
you are.. that's pretty neat, actually.

When I first started this, VirtualBox popped up a registration form. As
I really would like to be notified of updates and so on, I did want to
register.. but that crashed as shown in this snapshot:

In a way that annoys me more than not working at all would.. I really
do want to be notified.. oh, well - maybe next version, right?

Other than that, so far VirtualBox has done what I want without complaint
or glitch.. I didn't try it with Windows, but I suspect the developers
pay a lot of attention to that, so it's probably fine.

I'm sure VirtualBox will get even better over time - this is only
version 1.5 after all. But even right now it's probably perfectly
fine for most users. I like it..

| << Home | 5:11 PM | Technorati | Ping