WHILE looking for a way to run some Windows video software on my Linux PC last year, I stumbled upon VirtualBox, an open source program that enables you to install and use different operating systems on the same computer.
Despite the complexity such a task entails, VirtualBox—developed by a German company, Innotek—was remarkably easy to use.
Armed with the original installation CDs, I was able to quickly set up virtual machines, called “guests,” that could run Windows Vista, XP and 98 inside my Ubuntu Linux PC without much fuss. In this way, I was able to run Windows applications and switch between them and Linux programs simply by clicking on the appropriate window.
Unfortunately, the video application I wanted to run wouldn’t work inside the virtual XP machine because VirtualBox didn’t support the 3D graphics acceleration (Direct3D) that the program required.
Still, from time to time, VirtualBox proved useful when a program I wanted simply wasn’t available on Linux. For example, the virtual XP machine enabled me to run Hotspot Shield, a Windows- and Mac-only security program that incidentally also allows you to bypass country restrictions in Hulu, a Web site that offers free TV shows and movies from NBC, Fox and other media companies. It also enabled me to use Pando, a program for sending and receiving large files over the Web.
Last week, I turned to VirtualBox again because I wanted to watch the speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and the Web site that streamed the video used Microsoft’s Silverlight plug-in that works only with—surprise, surprise—Windows and Mac OS X.
When I downloaded the latest version of VirtualBox, I found that it is now owned by Sun Microsystems, which bought Innotek in February. Fortunately, the program, a 27MB download from Sun’s Web site, is still free for personal use.
Versions are available for Windows, Mac OS X, a wide variety of Linux distributions and Solaris, Sun’s Unix-based operating system.
The new version, Sun says, incorporates 2,000 improvements, including better support for Mac OS X and Solaris, seamless windowing for Solaris and Linux guests, and support for up to 32 SATA drives per virtual machine.
Unfortunately, a year after I first looked, VirtualBox still doesn’t support 3D acceleration, so it won’t be able to run most Windows games or even the eye candy on Ubuntu or Windows Vista. But recent posts on the VirtualBox blog are intriguing.
Reversing a May 2007 post that said 3D acceleration support would not be coming anytime soon, more recent messages show work has already begun on using OpenGL to emulate Direct3D. There is no indication how long it will take for this feature to appear, but the arguments for supporting 3D acceleration are compelling. VirtualBox, after all, is aimed at helping software developers create and test programs running on different operating systems, which are increasingly tapping the capabilities of 3D graphics to make computer systems easier to use. While some may dismiss this as eye candy, these features are not necessarily trivial. For example, the fancy scale effect on Compiz, which displays all active windows on a single screen in Linux, makes it much easier to handle multiple applications.
Giving guest systems the ability to run 3D-accelerated programs—including games—will also make it easier to migrate Windows users to Linux.
A tougher nut to crack might be how to get Mac OS X running in a virtual machine inside a Linux or Windows PC. In this case, the technical challenges would be complicated by legal questions, since Apple’s software licenses prohibit installing the operating system on non-Apple hardware. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody finds a way to do this one of these days. After all, with more than 5 million downloads and counting, somebody’s bound to be working on that—just for the heck of it.
In the meantime, I decided I’d give the newest version a spin, installing it on both my Linux desktop and my Macbook. Since I had no interest in installing Vista again—I did that last year—I tried OpenSolaris this time around. The operating system ran—albeit a little sluggishly—on my Ubuntu PC. On the Macbook, I installed Ubuntu without a problem. Now, on the notebook at least, I have the best of both worlds.
http://virtualbox.org/
From : http://www.manilastandardtoday.com/?page=business6_sept2_2008
