

An Oracle branded VirtualBox Released - Oracle aren't going to kill this project - edd
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/News

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jluxenberg
This release introduces MacOS guest support, but the license agreement for
MacOS states that it must not be run on non-Apple hardware. From the
VirtualBox manual:

 _"Mac OS X verifies whether it is running on Apple hardware, ...these
restrictions are not circumvented by VirtualBox and continue to apply."_

Wonder how long until someone patches the source to remove this check. A guest
OS shouldn't be able to snoop and find out what kind of hardware the host OS
is running on...smells like a hack.

~~~
jws
Just from abounding laziness… If I'm running Linux on my Mac Mini, can I run
Mac OS X in VirtualBox? The words say yes, but I rather doubt the executable
says yes.

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runevault
Considering my primary dev environment for personal projects is an Ubuntu
10.04 VM running on Virtual Box, this is good news.

Double bonus the new version has support for taking full advantage of i5 and
i7 procs, and I'm running an i7 920. Time to upgrade when I get home tonight.

~~~
kierank
Virtualbox is absolutely brilliant for reverse-engineering windows executables
so I'm glad to hear this.

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X-Istence
Are you using it strictly as a virtualisation host, or are you using the fact
that you can set up serial ports and whatnot to do Windows kernel debugging?

I personally use VMWare Fusion for reversing Windows executables, VMs are
invaluable in that snapshotting aids in quickly returning to a known good
state, and I can continue to take notes in applications outside of the VM to
keep track of my progress.

~~~
kierank
Both as a virtualisation host and I've dabbled in a bit of kernel debugging
using it.

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stcredzero
I suspect they've concluded that virtualization is a complement to databases.

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gaius
They concluded that a long time ago - OracleVM. Looks like the strategy is
OracleVM on the server and VirtualBox on the desktop.

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coverband
I love this thing but it goes through too frequent updates. They just had
3.1.8 9 days ago and now they have 3.2. It's not quiet about the updates
either, so I feel bad if I don't upgrade. I wish updates had known release
dates, except where security bugs are fixed.

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rbanffy
Hope not.

I fear most for OpenSolaris. It's harder to fork than VirtualBox and far
bigger.

~~~
thaumaturgy
How come? Our experience with OpenSolaris so far has been headache-y.

~~~
rbanffy
I have some limited experience with OpenSolaris, but it has, so far, been
good.

I particularly love ZFS and its Linux-ish the package management.

They could have the latest Gnome desktop for the adventurous ones.

~~~
thaumaturgy
We ended up using OpenSolaris for a project specifically for ZFS, plus some
related hardware support. I typically use OpenBSD or Debian for most projects
requiring a BSD or Linux, so I found myself comparing it to those two systems.

We've definitely had some trouble with getting packages to work correctly,
especially when using newer versions of software that were available as
packages in the distribution. Most maddeningly though, it's _slow_. We set it
up on a pretty beefy abmx machine, and at its worst it took over 15 minutes to
boot.

~~~
patrickgzill
There is something very wrong with your setup. It should boot within +- 20% of
the time taken by Linux on the same hardware.

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thaumaturgy
I know; we just haven't been able to puzzle out what's wrong with it. For now,
we have to live with it.

This was a while ago, but IIRC the slowdown was happening at a point in the
boot process where logging wasn't helpful at all.

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codebaobab
The Mac OS X support is cool and I would love to be able to run older OS X
versions in a VM, but it looks like they've still got quite a bit of work
before it is really usable. Issues include:

"Even when idle, OS X guests currently burn 100% CPU. This is a power
management issue that will be addressed in a future release."

:(

<http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch14.html>

~~~
petercooper
Ah, I was wondering why it was doing that! :-) Other than that, though, OS X
under this version is pretty snappy given the circumstances.

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patrickk
While I'm glad to see Oracle are pushing the development of VirtualBox, I'm
fearful they will make it 'not-free' and try to price it like VMware
Workstation. I have the same fear for MYSQL. Let's hope Oracle have the sense
not to tinker too much.

~~~
jluxenberg
It would be unfortunate if they decided to start charging for the free
edition, however most of the product is GPLed. The only parts which are not
open source are a machine-level RDP server, USB support, and USB over RDP (see
<http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions>). I'm sure the community would fork
it if Oracle closed it up.

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johnthedebs
I'm really impressed with VirtualBox's pace of development. They keep coming
out with _big_ new features, passing the other major (paid-for) VM software in
some ways.

Hope this keeps up.

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wingo
The editorialization in the title is unnecessary.

~~~
petercooper
Though if Oracle _had_ actually put "Oracle aren't going to kill this project"
on the page, my opinion of them would have gone up 1000 points.. :-)

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joubert
When I go Help | Check for Updates - nada. Will just have to go to their
website and d/l.

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drivebyacct
My VB has been Oracle branded for a while... oh wait, I was running a
prerelease. Never mind me.

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drivebyacct
What if I'm running Ubuntu on a MBP. Can I run OS X as a VB guest?

