
InfoWorld's Randall Kennedy takes an in-depth look at
VMware Workstation 7, VirtualBox 3.1, and Parallels Desktop 4, three technologies at the heart of 'the biggest shake-up for desktop virtualization in years.' The shake-up, which sees Microsoft's once promising Virtual PC
off in the Windows 7 XP Mode weeds, has put VirtualBox -- among the
best free open source software available for Windows -- out front as a general-purpose VM, filling the void left by VMware's move to make Workstation more appealing to developers and admins. Meanwhile, Parallels finally offers a Desktop for Windows on par with its Mac product, as well as Workstation 4 Extreme, which delivers
near native performance for graphics, disk, and network I/O.
Member since:
2008-11-29
I use Virtualbox on a ubuntu host with a XP guest. If the kernel gets updates, the needed modules are recompiled automatically if needed. For me it's very stable and does everything I want.
I do think the linux community should offer a stable framework for closed drivers. Most people just want their hardware/software to work and really don't care whether it is open source or not. If you don't like it, just use a kernel without that support.