back to article Oracle revs Sun's VirtualBox hypervisor

It has been only three weeks since Oracle kicked out the 3.2.12 maintenance release of its Oracle VM VirtualBox hypervisor for x86 and x64 PCs and servers, and today, the company is launching a new VirtualBox 4.0 version that supports more hardware, has more features, and comes with a new packaging of the hypervisor. Not …

COMMENTS

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  1. Mark C Casey

    I wonder..

    If they've finally bothered implementing dragging and dropping of files between the host desktop and the guest vm desktop? A feature that's been requested for years now in virtualbox.

    Copying files between the host and guest is otherwise a pita as you have to mess about with shared folder crap. The only way they could make it less intuitive is if you literally had to write a file to a cd on the host and then mount that cd in a separate cd drive accessible from the host.

    Actually, that'd be more intuitive than the shared folder approach come to think of it. Huh, guess they can't be less intuitive then.

    1. Sharpy86

      Simple....

      I have to say I use a bridged connection on the virtual machine and use file sharing on windows guests and SAMBA on *nix guests. The shared folders just always seemed to crash out on me.

      Didn't Connectix virtual machine (NOT the Microsoft version) used to do drag and drop file sharing?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Which Guest, Which Host?

      Do you want to be able to drag and drop to dos, or to a Linux prompt?

    3. Kebabbert

      @Mark

      I dont think they fixed drag and drop.

      I copy files, by using "bridged NIC" configuration on my virtual image. This means my ordinary host hard drive is accessable from the gues os, as mapped on the network, so I can browse my ordinary host hard drive and save files on my normal directories. Nothing is saved on my virtual machine.

    4. HighlightAll
      Linux

      Fundamental mistake

      I won't point it out, you'll get there eventually.

  2. Eddy Ito
    Thumb Up

    This could actually be good!

    Inasmuch as the base product is open source and they have obviously built a plug-in mechanism for the extension packs, it opens up a path for others to write extensions to fill vacancies that exist. These packs could equally be free or pay to play. Oracle may not know it but they may have even opened up whole new opportunities they never imagined and that, for us, could be a very good thing indeed.

  3. ysth

    For now it is free

    "Presumably, Oracle is not letting any of the code in the extension pack out under the GPU license, but for now it is free"

    As usual in these things, the chains are free; the keys will cost you.

    To Mark C Casey, I've never used shared folders; scp and rsync work just dandy. Drag and drop of files seems like a really idiotic thing to waste time getting working.

    I almost wish Oracle had done something scarier and provoked a fork of the open source version; I hate seeing oracle branding more and more each day.

  4. petur

    drag-drop

    Sorry, what is your problem with shared folders? It works great, it would really be a PITA if I had to move every file back and forth with drag and drop. At least I can let the apps act on the real data directly, and not copy the damn files over first....

  5. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Good article

    'nuff said

  6. ElNumbre
    Paris Hilton

    VirtualBox

    I was always impressed with VirtualBox as a zero purchase price product, and am glad that it still carries on.

    But when will someone bring out a type 1.5 hypervisor - a baremetal hypervisor with the ability to use and switch between virtual machines on the host machine? VMWare were promising such way back in the start of 2009 and I've get to see any marketing from them about it. I also heard that Citrix were looking at such a thing. But currently I'm stuck with booting a full OS (Linux/Winblows) then booting the virtual machine from that, whereas Id much prefer to boot a lightweight hypervisor (yes, probably Linux) that can render the virtual machines locally.

    Anyway, bit of a rant over, and Paris because I've seen her box (virtually).

    1. MrSeaneyC

      Client hypervisors

      ElNumbre - Try checking out XenClient from Citrix, it's a type 1 hypervisor designed for exactly that. I tried it on my laptop but it didn't quite tick all the boxes, and the HCL is fairly limited, but I can see it being useful for other people. It's not that slick at the moment but has a basic but useful synchroniser with Xenserver also which could be useful depending on what you want to do with it.

      Virtual Computer have the NxTop product which has better hardware support but less toys compared to XenClient, you might want to investigate that too.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    VB is great

    I used to, ahem, use extended trials of VMWare but I have been using VBox for around 18 months now, it's not as flexible as VMW the cloning of VMs needs some serious attention if they want VB to succeed, but each revision just gets a better and better!

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