UsingMac.com

Mac Tricks and Tips, Wallpapers and Applications for Mac Users

VirtualBox, The Free Virtual Machine

Advertisements

VirtualBox Icon

I was using VMware Fusion a while before I discovered VirtualBox. My intention is purely to test my web application on IE6+. That’s the reason why I would rather go for VirtualBox as a free, more lightweight and faster Virtual Machine developed and continuously enhanced by Sun Microsystems.

VirtualBox has a lot of similarities to VMware Fusion or Parallel in term of functions. However, from what I observe, VirtualBox is much faster and consumes less memory than VMware Fusion as well as Parallel. You can download and give it a try at http://www.virtualbox.org.

If your intention is like me, to use a Virtual Machine software to test your application on IE6+, VirtualBox perfectly suits you. Although VM Ware Fusion and Parallel are racing for the number of functionalities, VirtualBox on the other hands, try to optimize the speed and add in reasonable functions to suit with the basic purposes of using a virtual machine.

Yet another great thing about this open source application is that it can run on other operating system as well (e.g. Linux, Windows and Solaris).

Here is the starting point of VirtualBox.

Sun VirtualBox

Same as other Virtual Machine Application (VMware Fusion, Parallel), you would be able to install multiple Operating System (OS) on your VirtualBox. In my case, I have already installed Ubuntu 9.0.4 and Windows XP.

There are many configurations for the new piece of the OS that need to be set up before installation (e.g. Printer, Network Adapter, DVD). Fortunately, adapting from other commercial Virtual Machine Software, VirtualBox has already done everything for you. On your side, you only need to press Next, Next and Next... choose allocated RAM, allocated Hard Disk and, yay, finish.

Here are the advantages between VirtualBox and VM Ware Fusion…

Extra Guest Additions

After you finish installation of the new OS, VirtualBox offers you to install extra guest additions. From menu Devices, select Install Guest Additions… After that, double clicking on the VirtualBox Guest Additions will install extra features for VirtualBox.

VirtualBox. Install Guest Additions

  • Seamless mode (as good as the competitor virtual machine applications)
  • Full Screen mode: Perfect! Very fast to switch on and off
  • Mouse Integration between Mac OSX and Guest OS

Although shared folder support is not as good as other competitors, VirtualBox provides quite satisfied solution for shared folder. In order to create a shared folder, you need to…

VirtualBox Shared Folders

  1. Click on the cute folder icon at the bottom of the VirtualBox window
  2. Go through the process of setting the shared folder
  3. In the Windows OS, you would have to right click on the My Computer icon, choose Explore
  4. Expand My Network Places and VirtualBox Shared Folders
  5. Clicking on the shared folder under VirtualBox Shared Folders will bring you to the shared folder that you set in previous step.

In order to make it more convenient for me, I have mapped this shared folder as a network drive on the Windows Guest OS by the following steps…

  1. From Desktop, Double click on My Computer
  2. From menu bar, select menu Tools
  3. From drop down menu Tools, click on Map Network Drive
  4. Choose the Drive
  5. Type in the mapped folder (From what you see when you open VirtualBox Shared Folders under My Network Places). In my case, it is \\VBOXSVR\Desktop.
  6. Yay! Done. You are now able to connect to the shared folder with one click.

    7. Unfortunately, this won't work on Windows 7 and Windows Vista.

    Short Keystrokes to Switch Windows/Full Screen Mode

    • VMware Fusion requires user to press command-control-enter
    • Virtualbox, you only needs to press command-f

    Fast Switching Off

    We just need to close the VirtualBox window, VirtualBox will ask you to save the machine state, send the shutdown signal or to Power off the machine. Normally, I just click OK to switch off. VirtualBox is also faster to switch off than VMware Fusion and Parallel.

    VirtualBox. Power Off Machine

    Categories: Applications
    Tags: Mac, mac, Virtual Machine

    Subscribe to RSS Leave a Comment (10)

Related Entries

Some articles taken from our resource base, tightly related to current article, to empower you with more knowledge on tweaking the most out of your Mac.

10 Comments

NaVi 

Yay!! =)  That sounds great!!! I'll give this a try an other day, since I don't need windows or linux now...  One question: how is video game (3D) performance??  PS: keep up the good work : )

Linux Geek 

3D works great on it.  You set the amount of data that the VM has.

gene 

I've tried to migrate my vmware fusion windows-xp to virtualbox.
Migration wasn't easy (had to delete all snapshots from vmware, do some regedit stuff etc.) it took  45 minutes.
I was really surprised to see  how slow it is. Task manager ate up to 33% and cpu was  100% permanently. Had to drop virtualbox and keep  vmware. Didn't try a clean install, though.

just_jeepin 

I've been using Virtualbox for about two years now and still love it!  I just wish I could figure out how to configure it to recognize a control+click as a right click. It's a bummer having to pull out the two button mouse.

Hsotnicam 

Actually, in OS X's System Preferences, you can set the trackpad so that if you click with two fingers on the trackpad, it's a right click. System Preferences > Trackpad (or Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad), check the "Secondary Click" checkbox under "Two Fingers". This works in both Mac OS X and VirtualBox VMs.

Hsotnicam 

Actually, in OS X's System Preferences, you can set the trackpad so that if you click with two fingers on the trackpad, it's a right click. System Preferences > Trackpad (or Keyboard & Mouse > Trackpad), check the "Secondary Click" checkbox under "Two Fingers". This works in both Mac OS X and VirtualBox VMs.

Matt 

does anyone know how to close the guest console window and still keep the guest machine on?  I don't want my guests to shutdown when I close the virtualbox guest console.

John 

Great tip for mapping the shared drives to network ones! This makes accessing guest folders much faster on my MacBook.

José 

I got winXP working with virtual box on my macbook pro (sept 2009) and suddenly the four-finger swipe isn't working anymore!  (in OSX doing a four-finger swipe up shows the Exposé) can anyone point me in the right direction?

kukk 

i download this like 1 month ago and this destroyed my computer. this brake it up!!  if u want download it but it is not sure thta this works perfectly
i boughts a program in macstore! it is better

Leave a Comment