
Portable VirtualBox: run any OS from a USB stick - nreece
http://www.vbox.me/
======
mkesper
VirtualBox needs several kernel drivers installed and needs to start several
services: if the drivers and services are not already installed you’ll need
administrator rights to run Portable-VirtualBox.

So that's absolutely useless. If you've got admin rights, you can install
whatever you want. If you don't, well...

~~~
marcustek
Was just wondering the same thing. Do you know of any other portable solution
that would allow me to have a graphical shell (Linux distribution or Windows)
and just basically have emulator + vm on a flash drive ready to be launched
anywhere, without admin rights?

~~~
toni
There is another Portable VirtualBox distribution[1] that normally does not
install any service or driver. Only if you want to use a "Bridge Network" you
need to install the drivers. I usually work with "NAT" option and in that case
you don't need to install anything.

[1]
[http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-801...](http://portableappz.blogspot.com/2012/08/virtualbox-4120-80170-420-80231-rc2-x86.html)

~~~
shadowfox
This one also seems to require admin rights?

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616c
Did they find a developer to replace the last guy? He wanted out and needed
someone to pick up the slack. I thought it is worth noting here. That was a
while ago. So is the project still alive and kicking?

[http://www.vbox.me/blog/portable-virtualbox-needs-a-new-
main...](http://www.vbox.me/blog/portable-virtualbox-needs-a-new-main-
developer/)

~~~
lgas
I have no personal knowledge of this project at all, but that post is from
over a year ago and the latest commits are from 2 months ago... which would
make me think yes, but nothing under src has been touched in 3 years... so...
I guess I still have no idea.

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jpalomaki
Would be interesting if one could package a (Linux) virtual machine into
executable that could run on Windows without installing any drivers. Something
like CoLinux but maybe more limited.

    
    
      [1] http://www.colinux.org/

~~~
mikevm
Wow, coLinux looks very interesting, but it also seems like they don't have
any release for 3.x kernels. Is the project dead?

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username42
Something like [http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-
compu...](http://blog.laptopmag.com/usb-stick-contains-dual-core-computer-
turns-any-screen-into-an-android-station) would be more realistic. With USB3,
you could even avoid hdmi port and turn your computer into a dumb "keyboard,
screen, storage, network". Is it possible to have full access to a USB
peripheral without administrator rights ?

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thunderbong
I've been using Portable VirtualBox for the last few years. It works
wonderfully. It's really convenient to carry around on a USB stick. As long as
you're using basic NAT on the machines they work perfect. I've not been able
to run the machines 'headless' though. Otherwise, if you're like me, and carry
your entire software suite on your USB, this is perfect.

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yaddayadda
Does Portable-VirtualBox itself only run under MS Windows?

~~~
voltagex_
Yeah, it's written in AutoHotKey, of all things.

~~~
chrismorgan
Portable software as a general rule is written in poor languages. AutoHotkey,
AutoIt and NSIS are the three main languages in use, because they allow people
to moderately easily produce not enormous binaries and have a surprisingly low
initial learning curve (though later on you hit plenty of walls with them;
none of them is suited as a general purpose programming language).

I speak this as the developer of the PortableApps.com Launcher, which I did in
NSIS as the launchers already in use were NSIS, and as size matters a lot
(that killed things like Python outright, though using the RPython parts of
PyPy with the garbage collector ripped out would have worked---I checked it
out and was able to successfully compile <100KB executables; D was
disqualified for some reason I do not recall, Go for its heavy runtime even
after ripping out the Unicode tables, &c.), and as I was not at all
comfortable in C or C++ at the time.

I rather suspect that a large part of the reason for the apparently poor
language choice is that the people that develop and use such things are
strongly predominantly young people who are having to rove from computer to
computer; as they get older, they tend to end up with a machine of their own
and so no longer need portable apps. I don't any more, for example (and I
don't use Windows any more either). The developers of these things are in
consequence similarly young and have not yet learned good sense in programming
(I include myself in that category, though I reckon the PortableApps.com
Launcher to contain best-of-class engineer in the portable software space---
five years later, at age 22, I am surprisingly unashamed of it, though now I
would write it in Rust; I should try that one of these years).

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randyrand
At first read I thought this was talking about booting off a USB key into any
OS using virtual-box as a hypervisor. Now I'm dissappointed =(

~~~
dspillett
That would actually be very easy to create. Most Linux installers are happy to
install to a USB stuck and most PCs with happily boot from one. I have a
working Debian setup install on a large stick, created form the standard
install procedure, that I use for diagnostics - adding vbox (or KVM or Xen or
...) to that would be the same as adding it to any other Linux setup and you
could then add a set of VMs that can be selected to start automatically on
boot (rigging the boot process as needed to give you the choice at the
appropriate point). For much better performance at a price, get a good mSATA
SSD and USB3 enclosure instead of using a bog-standard USB stick.

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chiachun
If we are not using the guest OS and Windows back and forth, maybe a live USB
is a better solution.

~~~
danelectro
I like having a multipartitioned USB 3.0 device even when going back & forth
between Windows & various Linuxes.

It's been live USB for me for over a decade now, and the hardware for fast
boot times has finally arrived with USB 3.0.

It only takes less than a minute to reboot to a different OS using a Bootux
Multibootable USB stick.

PC does not even have to contain a HDD.

I've used VM's but there ain't nothing like the real thing baby ;-)

Native BIOS booting to active partitions is so fundamental, and now so
potentially disruptive that it had to be replaced by UEFI if nothing else just
to put some hurdles in the way.

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JimmaDaRustla
livelinux usb is the same I assume - it creates a portable linux USB, assuming
it just launches some VM. Windows only though.

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lazylizard
qemu-> [http://mobalivecd.mobatek.net/en/](http://mobalivecd.mobatek.net/en/)

