VirtualBox (Best Virtual Machine Software.. that’s FREE) – F.A.Q., Tutorial, and Guide

By Gophn

What is a virtual machine program/software?

What is a virtual OS or “Guest Operating System”?

Why would anyone one want to use a virtual machine?

What is VirtualBox?

What does VirtualBox have over the other alternatives (like VMware or VirtualPC)?

What is required to run VirtualBox on your system?

How do you setup VirtualBox on my system?

Can you do everything in a VirtualBox “Guest OS” (even 3D games)?

… Read more to find out the answers to these questions …

_________________________________________________

What is a virtual machine (aka. VM) program?

A virtual machine is a software implementation of a computer machine that has the ability like a physical machine.

Your physical system is then called the “host”, while the virtual machine is usually called a “guest”.

Simple right?

What is a “Virtual” or “Guest” Operating System?

A virtual or guest OS is an operating system (such as Windows or Linux) that is installed and implemented in a virtual machine.

Here is a how VirtualBox, on a Linux host, is running Windows Vista as a guest OS in a virtual machine window.

Why would anyone one want to use a virtual machine?

There many many great reasons to why to have (or at least to tryout) a virtual machine on your current systems. I will split up the reasons into two categories: (1) for everyone and (2) for more technical people.

Reasons for everyone:
• You can test or try out a new Operating System (like Windows 7) on your system without having to format and lose all of your data.
• You can use your “guest OS” to be the guinea pig for your testing of programs that you are unsure of wanting on your “host” system.
• If you have any compatibility problems for your favorite programs and such in your “host OS” (like Windows Vista), you can install the program and use it on the guest OS (like Windows XP) that is fully compatible with your favorite program.
• If you ever want to get rid of the virtual machine, its as easy as clicking the delete button inside of the VM software. No need to format and such.

Reasons for other technical people:
• You can use “guest OS(s)” to test programs that you do not want to test on your host OS.
• If you have to support people that uses different OS’s, then make a VM of each of those software on your host system.
• You can play your old games that are not compatible on the latest operating system by having a VM with a compatible OS.
• You can use the VM to test certain programs that might cause issues or having viruses.
• You can show off to people that you have more than one OS running at a time.

vbox_icon

What is VirtualBox?

Sun VirtualBox is a collection of powerful virtual machine tools, targeting desktop computers, enterprise servers and embedded systems. With VirtualBox, you can virtualize 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems on machines with Intel and AMD processors, either by using hardware virtualization features provided by these processors or even entirely in software, at your option.

With VirtualBox, you can run unmodified operating systems – including all of the software that is installed on them – directly on top of your existing operating system, in a special environment called a “virtual machine”.

And its the BEST free enterprise-quality and open source virtualization solution.

What does VirtualBox have over the other alternatives ?

That’s simple. Here is a comparison chart (using Windows XP as the guest OS):

Name of VM program	Sun VirtualBox	Microsoft Virtual PC 2007	Parallels Workstation / Desktop	VMware Workstation
Supported Host OS’s	Win 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris 10U5+, OpenSolaris, FreeBSD	Windows Vista Only (XP and older versions require Virtual PC 2004)	Win 2000/ XP/2003/Vista, Linux, OS X	Win 2000/ XP/2003/Vista, Linux, OS X
Supported Guest OS’s	DOS, Win 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Win7, 2003/2008, Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, OS/2, Solaris, OpenSolaris, others	Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista	DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Linux, OS/2	DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP, Vista, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris
Intel VT-x support (CPU virtualization extensions)	yes	yes	yes	limited
AMD-V support (CPU virtualization extensions)	yes	yes	yes	limited
CD/DVD writing	yes	no	no	no
3D acceleration	yes (OpenGL 2.0 and D3D)	no	no	limited
Mouse Cursor Integration (API)	yes	no	yes	yes (buggy sometimes)
Drag and Drop files	yes	no	yes	yes
Virtual Disk Management	Very Easy	Easy	Hard	Hard
Performance (out of 10)	9/10	6/10	7/10	8/10
Open Source Software	yes	no	no	no
Price (License Cost)	Free	Free	$49 for PC / $79 for Mac OS X	$189 for PC, $79 for Fusion on Mac OS X

Here is the big chart for all of the technical differences:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VBox_vs_Others

As you can see, VirtualBox is literally the best VM software out there, especially for the non-technical person since the setup is very painless. Also, the performance is quite amazing for VirtualBox.

What is required to run VirtualBox on your system?

The requirements to run VirtualBox are:
• Host operating system: all of the current ones should be compatible
• Processor (CPU): most of the current Intel and AMD CPUs should be fine (recommend at least a dual core CPU)
• Memory (RAM): at least 512MB of RAM (recommend 1GB or more)
• Hard Drive space: 69MB for the program

The requirements to run a “Guest OS” are:
• Guest operating system: all of the current ones should be compatible
• Processor (CPU): this is when the need for a multi-core CPU comes in (at least dual core and virtualization is a must)
• Memory (RAM): depends on the guest OS you choose (at least 512MB of RAM for an OS like XP)
• Hard Drive space: depends on the guest OS you choose

How do you setup VirtualBox on my system?

Here is my fully detailed video tutorial/guide to show you how to install VirtualBox, how to set it up for a “guest OS”, and install the “Guest Additions” software into your guest OS.

Setup used in the Video Tutorial:
• Used the latest version of VirtualBox 3.0.x
• System Used: Clevo D900F (aka. Sager NP9280) Notebook Computer
• Host operating system: Windows Vista (64-bit)
• Guest operating system: Windows XP (32-bit)
• Processor (CPU): Intel Core i7-975 (enabled Intel VT-x and enabled 8 cores in VirtualBox)
• Graphics (GPU): enabled the 3D Acceleration with 128MB of video memory
• Memory (RAM): enabled 1024MB for the XP guest OS
• Hard Drive space: enabled 10GB virtual hard disk for the XP guest OS

Note: remember to watch it in HD/HQ (High Quality) mode if you want to see everything better.

I had to split the video tutorial into two parts.
(1) Being the installation, setup configuration and installation for the guest OS
(2) The installation of the “Guest Additions” for the guest OS and how to check if you are good to go.

Can you do everything in a VirtualBox “Guest OS” (even 3D games)?

You should be able to do pretty much anything in the guest OS that you would normally do if it were a physical machine with a normal install of an OS.

As for gaming, you can definitely play them. Yay… surprisingly the OpenGL 2.0 (and the experimental Direct3D 8/9) that is enabled in this virtual machine is actually capable of playing 3D games. Not the latest and greatest of course, but some really good classic titles.

Here is a list that would give an idea of the graphical power of VirtualBox:

Working OpenGL Games (and Apps)	Celestia GL Excess Google Earth Really Slick Screensavers Quake III Arena Return to Castle Wolfenstein, GOTY Edition Serious Sam 1 Tux Racer Unreal Tournament (original) Warcraft III (with -opengl parameter) Counter Strike 1.6 Half-Life
Working Direct3D Games	3DMark 2001 (most test were perfect, some glitches) Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. slow. 13 fps@640×480. Disable mouse integration. C&C: Renegade. Disable mouse integration. Rise of Nations Unreal II – works. 8 fps@800×600. Disable mouse integration.

As you can see, this is a pretty nice list (which is still growing) of 3D games that can actually be played… most of which had good response and good performance.

Wow, what can’t this free VM software do?

Conclustion:

This program is definitely the epitome of the phrase “bang for the buck”… especially since it is free. There is no beating this software is features, performance, compatibility, and probably support (since it is an Open Source Software that has a huge community to support it).

This is a must have program for those that are looking to do any of the above that was described and detailed.

gapproved