Hi Guys,
I need to do testing on clean machines frequently so i need some kind of virtual machine emulator which can load and run clean OS images.
Do you know any recommended freeware or low cost emulator ?
Thanks,
Adi Barda
views:
282answers:
10
+11
A:
I have been using VirtualBox for a while - http://www.virtualbox.org/ - and it works a treat
mfloryan
2009-06-23 12:42:08
Only VirtualBox OSE is actually 'free'
Aiden Bell
2009-06-23 12:45:35
+1 VirtualBox works great. Note, however, that the open-source version does not virtualize USB controllers. And the closed source version is available for free, but only for testing purposes.
balpha
2009-06-23 12:46:29
@Aiden and @balpha - Reread the license agreement and in particular the license FAQ. The commercial version is available for "personal use" at no charge, where "personal use" means you install it and use it yourself (even if it's for work).
Josh Kelley
2009-06-23 12:58:50
I had a concern re "personal use" but the FAQ sets it out clearly: Personal use is when you install the product on one or more PCs yourself and you make use of it (or even your friend, sister and grandmother). It doesn't matter whether you just use it for fun or run your multi-million euro business with it. Also, if you install it on your work PC at some large company, this is still personal use. However, if you are an administrator and want to deploy it to the 500 desktops in your company, this would no longer qualify as personal use.
paxdiablo
2009-06-23 13:36:10
Josh Kelley, Pax: You're totally right, I misremembered the license.
balpha
2009-06-26 20:56:30
+1
A:
VirtualBox is a powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Simone Carletti
2009-06-23 12:42:33
+7
A:
Everyone seems to be suggesting VirtualBox but, in my opinion, you can't beat VMWare at the virtualization game.
I would get a copy of VMWare Player (it's free and you'd be hard pressed to find one cheaper than that), then use this web site here to create yourself a virtual machine to whatever specification you need.
I run heaps of images at work under XP (and one XP image at home under Ubuntu) and it really is easy to set up. Early editions of the Linux VMWare required you to re-configure the software whenever the kernel changed but this is now an automatic process.
At work, we run all the MSDN Windows OS' for testing our products and they work very well.
paxdiablo
2009-06-23 12:47:50
Yes, by shutting down the VM and copying the whole directory to somewhere else :-) Actually, that's how we do it for our automated testing. The whole VM is copied in and then started, where the test program all start up automatically and finally FTP results through to a central server before shutting down.
paxdiablo
2009-06-23 13:27:31
+2
A:
We're using Xen paravirtualization, and it's working very well. It's the same technology used by Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) to run your virtual machine images on their physical hosts. It only costs you 0.5-3.0% of your CPU cycles too.
Jim Ferrans
2009-06-23 12:54:21
A:
I'm a big fan of VirtualBox as well. The OSE is free and runs really well.
VMWare is nice because it's incredibly robust, especially the server edition. With the server edition, you can run all off your VM's of one machine and access them at any time by browsing to VMWare's web GUI. This is a nice feature that I've used time and time again.
I would say that if you're doing just testing/playing around, I'd go with VirtualBox over VMWare.
Max Felker
2009-06-23 13:34:34
"I would say that if you're doing just testing/playing around, I'd go with VirtualBox over VMWare." - why (just curious)?
paxdiablo
2009-06-25 04:29:36
It was built for a more personal use where as VMWare deals with both personal and enterprise-level virtualizaion solutions. This is not to say that VMWare won't do what you need to it to if you're just messing around but it takes more room and RAM.
Max Felker
2009-07-01 18:25:32
A:
I realize this has been well-answered already, but I'd like to add a couple of notes about VirtualBox: (1) In my experience, it is much faster than VMware when running as a Linux host, and (2) the snapshot features have been greatly improved in recent versions (the comprehensive snapshot functionality is what kept me in VMware for a long time.)
Jim
2010-07-25 18:39:19