OK, so I'm currently looking for some VM software I can run on my home PC.

At work, I use VMware Workstation. Which works vastly better than 
anything else I've seen, but it's expensive. Really expensive. I just 


There is VMware Player, of course. That's free. But being free it's also 
crippled with all sorts of artificial limitations; no linked clones, no 
snapshots, no teams. Basically it lets you run another OS, but without 
any of the benefits of a VM.

In the past, I've tried BOCHS and QEMU. The interface is CLI-only. You 
have to manually manage all the files involved. You end up having to 
write elaborate scripts to fire up a VM. It works, but it's extremely 
complicated. Plus this stuff runs very, very slowly.

I also tried Virtual Box. This offers a familiar GUI interface. (And I 
particularly like the way each VM has its own window, so you can SEE 
multiple VMs at the same time. On the other hand, it lacks activity 
lights...) However, there are two main problems with it. The first is 
that you still have to manually manage disks and VMs separately. But the 
big, big problem is IT'S TOTALLY UNRELIABLE! It just will NOT do what 
you tell it to. The number of times it's crashed on me, or a particular 
VM has become unusable is utterly unacceptable.

Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are 
other VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are 
> other VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)

Have you tried VirtualBox?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am 27.08.2012 14:23, schrieb Warp:
> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are
>> other VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)
>
> Have you tried VirtualBox?

If "VirtualBox" == "Virtual Box" then yes, he did mention it.

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On 8/27/2012 3:24, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are other
> VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)

If you're talking about Windows, Microsoft makes a Virtual PC that comes 
with certain versions of Windows that works well.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:24:08 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> I also tried Virtual Box. This offers a familiar GUI interface. (And I
> particularly like the way each VM has its own window, so you can SEE
> multiple VMs at the same time. On the other hand, it lacks activity
> lights...) However, there are two main problems with it. The first is
> that you still have to manually manage disks and VMs separately. But the
> big, big problem is IT'S TOTALLY UNRELIABLE! It just will NOT do what
> you tell it to. The number of times it's crashed on me, or a particular
> VM has become unusable is utterly unacceptable.

FWIW, I use VirtualBox on Linux pretty much daily, never have stability 
problems at all.

I'm also not sure what you  mean by "manag[ing] disks and VMs separately" 
- the GUI that I use (which is the default GUI AFAIK) doesn't do that.

Jim

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On 27/08/2012 07:37 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 8/27/2012 3:24, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are
>> other
>> VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)
>
> If you're talking about Windows, Microsoft makes a Virtual PC that comes
> with certain versions of Windows that works well.

I thought that was limited to only running one single instance of 
Windows XP for backwards compatibility.

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On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:52:54 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 27/08/2012 07:37 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> On 8/27/2012 3:24, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>> Are there any other VM products with investigating? (Clearly there are
>>> other VM products; I'm asking whether any of them are any good.)
>>
>> If you're talking about Windows, Microsoft makes a Virtual PC that
>> comes with certain versions of Windows that works well.
> 
> I thought that was limited to only running one single instance of
> Windows XP for backwards compatibility.

No, you're thinking of "compatibility mode", not Virtual PC.

There's also Hyper-V if you have Windows Server.

Jim

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On 27/08/2012 08:42 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> FWIW, I use VirtualBox on Linux pretty much daily, never have stability
> problems at all.

You never had it pop up and say "This process has performed an illegal 
operation and must be terminated. Do you wish to send an error report"? 
(Oh, well, I guess you wouldn't be seeing a Windows-specific error 
message on Linux... But you get what I'm saying.)

You never had a VM working perfectly, and then the next day VirtualBox 
utterly /refuses/ to start that VM? (Like, you click "start", and either 
nothing happens or VirtualBox instantly crashes.)

You never had it refuse to delete a snapshot for no defined reason? 
(E.g., you have a VM powered down, you take a snapshot, realise you 
wanted to do something first, go to delete the snapshot you just made, 
and it says "sorry, I can't do that Dave".)

> I'm also not sure what you  mean by "manag[ing] disks and VMs separately"
> - the GUI that I use (which is the default GUI AFAIK) doesn't do that.

When you create a VM, it asks to create a virtual disk. (Which isn't 
surprising; VMware does this also.) But it seems to want to put all the 
VM files in one place, and all the virtual disk files in another place. 
And it asks me if I want to reuse one of my existing disk files. (Why 
would I *ever* want to do that??) And when I delete a VM, this does 
/not/ delete the disk image files with it. I have to manually do that 
from the disk management window.

Maybe the GUI is completely different on Linux or something. But on 
Windows, you can't even edit a snapshot description while the VM it 
belongs to is running. (I can understand, from a technical perspective, 
how that could end up not working. What I can't figure out is why the 
heck nobody has fixed this. It can't be that damned hard...)

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On Mon, 27 Aug 2012 21:59:13 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> On 27/08/2012 08:42 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> FWIW, I use VirtualBox on Linux pretty much daily, never have stability
>> problems at all.
> 
> You never had it pop up and say "This process has performed an illegal
> operation and must be terminated. Do you wish to send an error report"?
> (Oh, well, I guess you wouldn't be seeing a Windows-specific error
> message on Linux... But you get what I'm saying.)

Nope, never.

> You never had a VM working perfectly, and then the next day VirtualBox
> utterly /refuses/ to start that VM? (Like, you click "start", and either
> nothing happens or VirtualBox instantly crashes.)

Nope, never.  I've even had my entire Linux DE crash on me and I've been 
able to restart the VM when it came back up.

What version are you running?  Sounds like an old version maybe, or just 
that the Windows version is garbage and you should use the Linux 
version.  I've had nothing but good luck with the Linux version - enough 
so that I stopped using even VMware Player.

> You never had it refuse to delete a snapshot for no defined reason?
> (E.g., you have a VM powered down, you take a snapshot, realise you
> wanted to do something first, go to delete the snapshot you just made,
> and it says "sorry, I can't do that Dave".)

Nope, never had it do that, either.

>> I'm also not sure what you  mean by "manag[ing] disks and VMs
>> separately"
>> - the GUI that I use (which is the default GUI AFAIK) doesn't do that.
> 
> When you create a VM, it asks to create a virtual disk. (Which isn't
> surprising; VMware does this also.) But it seems to want to put all the
> VM files in one place, and all the virtual disk files in another place.
> And it asks me if I want to reuse one of my existing disk files. (Why
> would I *ever* want to do that??) And when I delete a VM, this does
> /not/ delete the disk image files with it. I have to manually do that
> from the disk management window.

All of my VMs' disk files are with the configuration, but this actually 
makes sense on a couple different levels, because you can do 'linked 
cloning', in which case deleting the disk file would affect multiple VMs 
(ie, it would break them).  But in the Linux GUI, you do have the option 
when deleting a VM to also delete the disk files at the same time if 
they're not linked/in use by another VM.

> Maybe the GUI is completely different on Linux or something. But on
> Windows, you can't even edit a snapshot description while the VM it
> belongs to is running. (I can understand, from a technical perspective,
> how that could end up not working. What I can't figure out is why the
> heck nobody has fixed this. It can't be that damned hard...)

That works just fine on Linux.

Jim

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On 8/27/2012 13:59, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> asks me if I want to reuse one of my existing disk files. (Why would I
> *ever* want to do that??) And when I delete a VM, this does /not/ delete the
> disk image files with it.

I think you just answered your own question.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Oh no! We're out of code juice!"
   "Don't panic. There's beans and filters
    in the cabinet."

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