VirtualBox, created by innotek, is a commercial and proprietary x86 virtualizer for Linux, Mac, and Windows. Since January of 2007, VirtualBox has been available under the GNU General Public License (GPL) as a slightly limited, open-source version known as VirtualBox OSE (Open source edition). So, what is virtualization? It's been all the talk lately, but what's it all really about? Well, let's talk about it, and while we do, let's discuss one of the most popular virtualization tools out there, namely VirtualBox.

If you've been a Windows user for years and you're now considering making the plunge to Linux, your biggest concern is probably how you're going to run all of that Windows software you've purchased over the years. It was really expensive, wasn't it? And you really don't feel comfortable just dumping hundreds, even thousands, of dollars down the toilet. If you give Linux a chance, you'll probably find that most of the software you need is already there in one form of another; check out our previous article on alternative software, The Better Linux Version, if you're interested. One of the first options you should consider is using Wine, a Windows Emulator (sort of), which lets you run Windows application directly on your Linux desktop. But if what you really want is to run your Windows applications without considering the alternative software or trying Wine or you think it's just plain easier to stick with Windows, then you can always virtualize Windows.

Virtualization essentially allows you to run a guest operating system on top of an existing operating system. That is, while you're plugging away on Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE or whatever your favorite Linux distribution might be, you can have a window on your desktop which contains another operating system entirely. If you're new to the concept, this probably sounds crazy. Check out the snapshot below (click on it for a larger view). Below is a screenshot of my home desktop. If you can't tell, I'm running OpenSUSE, my personal favorite Linux OS, and while doing this, I've launched the VirtualBox application; you can tell because sitting right there on top of my OpenSUSE desktop is a window containing the Microsoft Windows operating system, and within Windows, I'm running the Firefox web browser. 

For the newbies out there, is this starting to make sense? VirtualBox essentially does the job of running another operating system on top of your existing system. It's cross platform; it runs on Linux, Mac, and Windows. So, to take this a step further, if you're running Windows and considering Linux but you're not sure about it yet, try downloading VirtualBox for Windows and setting up a Linux distro as a guest operating system; this will let you try out a fully functional Linux desktop without actually installing anything. If you haven't already figured it out, VirtualBox can act as a test bed for new, beta versions of operating systems, for updates, for installations of beta software, etc.; it's a way for you to get all the benefits of an operating system without having to fully install one over your existing OS.

By the way, VirtualBox has become a standard in most of the packaging systems for Linux. Using your existing packaging system, say the Synaptic package manager on Ubuntu or Yast on OpenSUSE, just try doing a search for VirtualBox; there's a good chance it's available. If not, you can go to the official VirtualBox website, http://www.virtualbox.org/, and download what you need. The first time that you run VirtualBox, it won't have any guest operating systems available; the design is extremely intuitive though; if you start by clicking new on VirtualBox, it will walk you through the steps of setting up your guest OS. You can install an operating system on VirtualBox by using a CD/DVD or an .iso image containing the installer for the OS of your choice. Once the OS is up and running, you have the option of sharing folders between the host and guest system, making snapshots of the operating system's current state (so you can easily boot back up inito the current state), sharing CD/DVD drives, etc.

There are a couple of negatives to VirtualBox. First of all, for the system to run, it has to share memory. So, if you don't have a lot of memory, you might have trouble running a host operating system, especially a memory hog like Windows; you can specify the amount of memory you wish to provide to the guest system. The same goes for video memory, so doing things like playing Windows games is probably not going to happen; as of this writing, there weren't any 3D acceleration drivers available for VirtualBox. Also, the OSE (Open Source edition) of VirtualBox lacks some rather nice features of the paid version, such as USB support, the ability to control your guest OS through remote desktop, and iSCSI support.

Overall, VirtualBox is an excellent application for virtualizing your favorite operating systems. I use it to virtually run all of the operating systems that we talk about here on LinuxHow2, such as Ubuntu, Fedora, Gentoo, and  PCLinuxOS. Virtual machines are a great way to test new operating systems, sandbox an OS, and quickly wipe out and reinstall problem operating systems; it's becoming common to virtual an operating system, because of the speed of use, and because said operating system does not directly interfere with the host OS, if it's infected with viruses (as is often the case with Windows) or you just plain don't need it anymore, it's as simple as one click to delete it off your system for good. Check back with LinuxHow2, we're going to continue writing articles on various different virtual machine applications, such as VMWare and qemu.

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Comments (7)

1. 31-01-2008 12:36

some weeks ago i created a XP vm without any hardware accelerated virtualization and without modifications , however, it was faster responding than my natively installed and also new XP on another partition

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enteon

2. 31-01-2008 16:07

Same Deal

I was running Windows XP on a PC, which I later converted to Ubuntu with a Windows XP VM, and the VM runs a lot better and smoother. It's probably more a sign of how terrible Windows runs after its been on a PC for awhile.

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Christopher Mead

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