b-man Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 what virtual machine is best currently im using virtual box but find the cursor is buggy and jumps out of the box all the time when i havent even got to the side and i cant work out how to share a folder with it with the main computerwhat others are there Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DigeratiPrime Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 I think VMware Workstation is probably the most user friendly, it is the only one with guest additions that support drag and drop of files that I know of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeFiend Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 it is the only one with guest additions that support drag and drop of files that I know of.and many, many more features, like the invaluable snapshot tree, scripting support and everything else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vaska94 Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 Vmware Workstation 5 :-)it's best i think and it has very low load on my PC i can turn on 3 VM-s on vmware and1 on Virtualbox :-)so Vmware Rulez D: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eyeball Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 VMware workstation gets my vote Snapshots are just Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin H Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 (edited) I liked the "idea" of VirtualBox i.e. a slim and minimalistic alternative to VMware Workstation, but unfortunetly, then it always crashed on me when trying to test a new ISO, and now it dosen't even work on Win2k either, so i'm out then...VMware Workstation is then also getting my vote, and just like vaska94, then i also prefer v5, as it does everything that i need, while being much much lighter than the newest versions... I use the latest version of v5 i.e. v5.0.0.13124, and it's footprint is about 79 megs... Edited June 14, 2009 by Martin H Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DigeratiPrime Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 I think most of the "bloat" from v6 came from the two linux guest addition packages (Vmware Tools) , they're each 100MB. Space on a hard drive doesnt really affect performance if those files are not loaded into memory. There are many improvements from v5, so the 200MB linux.iso file really doesn't matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin H Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 With lighter i also meant footprint(sorry, if i misused the term ), and 200+ megs on my system partition(5GB) matters to me, since i don't have any needs beyond what v5 does perfectly for me, but i fully accknowledge that others feel otherwise Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeFiend Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 You'd be right. Installing the client tools on most Linux distros is usually a real pain (especially in vmware server, where the ISO doesn't seem to be updated quite as often -- you usually have to resort to copying that new ISO from a recent version of vmware so it works at all).the various vmware tools iso sizes:linux.iso: 200MBwindows.iso: 32MB (includes x64 tools/drivers)freebsd.iso: 25MBwinpre2k.iso: 13MBsolaris.iso: 8MbThe Linux tools ISO is 3x bigger than all the others combined.I use the latest version of v5 i.e. v5.0.0.13124, and it's footprint is about 79 megs...Well, not sure how you calculate your footprint. Just the GUI? Going by what metric? (it has to be private bytes, not that "Memory" column in task manager).I'm using v6.5.2 on Vista x64, and the GUI takes 34512KB (going by private bytes, as per process explorer says). Even if you count the NAT/DHCP/auth services (11256KB extra), it's still a hair under 45MB total (out of 8GB, so about 0.5% of my RAM) I'd hardly call that bloated. Some of my apps running are using over 500MB private bytes... Also, there's a whole lot more to this than just memory usage -- tip of the iceberg really, and RAM is dirt cheap. Last time I paid $37.99 CAD for a "Buffalo Firestix Heat FSH800D2B-K4G 4GB 2X2GB PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL4" kit (that's $33.96 USD by today's rate). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin H Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 Hi CoffeeFiend Sorry, i thought footprint meant "installed size", so sorry about that! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeFiend Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 Sorry, i thought footprint meant "installed size", so sorry about that!No need to be sorry, just a misunderstanding I guess (disk or memory footprint). Disk footprint probably increased a lot, but when 1TB drives are $80 (8 whole pennies a GB) I can't say I worry too much about a few MBs extra, especially if it brings new features. Edit: Looks like I had missed that post you made while I was writing mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 If you don't mind paying for it, VMWare workstation has been the best for awhile. If you want something free, you'll have to decide what you want and what host OS you're running. I use Virtual PC on my Windows boxes, and VMWare workstation on my linux machines, but I do most of my work in Hyper-V at this point on a 2008 server so I can't comment really on the others anymore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeFiend Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 I do most of my work in Hyper-V at this point on a 2008 serverI'm hoping to move on to that within the next 6 months too. There's not a gigantic price diff between a decent ed of Vista/Win7 + vmware workstation and Win2008 R2 x64 with Hyper-V 2 either (in fact, it's probably cheaper if you have action pack subscription!) And Hyper-V has most of the stuff I want in workstation (snapshots, scripting support and so on) *and* vmware server combined (and even extras, like Live Migration, all the mangement tools and such -- without paying thousands of $). It's probably $200 extra, but you're also getting a LOT out of it too: active directory, group policy, direct access, kick-a** remote desktop services (with aero glass, directx redirection and all), IIS 7.5 (finally including a decent ftp server), MSMQ, a stable platform to run SQL Server onto, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cluberti Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 All reasons I've mostly moved to Hyper-v . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoffeeFiend Posted June 14, 2009 Share Posted June 14, 2009 All reasons I've mostly moved to Hyper-v .I can see a lot of people moving to that in the near future too. It's pretty amazing what MS pulled off here. In a couple of years, they made a perfectly good alternative to vmware's high-end products, matching pretty much all of the features, and beating it on cost too (especially if you're going to virtualize windows -- Win2008 Enterprise including 4 licenses for VMs). I'm starting to be somewhat worried about vmware's future. and that's coming from a die-hard, long time user of vmware too.Not only I'm going to get the best of workstation + server/esx/management tools combined, but it's built right into Windows (you know it'll be supported too, updating right from Windows Update too), and I can actually logon locally on that box and use windows apps (unlike on ESX). Also, the ESX(i) series never seems to actually run on any of the hardware I have or plan on buying ("newfangled" stuff no one's heard of, like onboard SATA from intel ICH chipsets). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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