Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

VirtualBox 6.0 released

virtualbox.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 247 posts

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#41

Post by dhimes »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #18
krylon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely recall that this was discussed here on HN a while ago and somebody who had actually tried to buy the necessary license reported that Oracle would not sell them the license; IIRC, the sales person told them to "just use it, we don't care", or something along those lines. Which is very problematic, of course, without something in writing, and given Oracle's reputation.

That's awkward as hell. It's sad that their offering is the only decent one out there (for my needs and with that UX) that's at least got open source options. I hope VirtualPC from Microsoft becomes cross-platform and open sourced, or at least some sort of new VM software from Microsoft, since they seem to be doing a better job at offering up MIT licensed projects lately.

I wouldn't even mind shelling out $50 for a license if I needed one, but they won't let me. It takes $5000, because they require a purchase of 100 or more at a time. It feels like they don't want to spend time on small stuff, and really don't care.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#42

Post by zapzupnz »

Holy cow, what an ugly user interface. I mean, it wasn't exactly a Matisse before, but it's just hideous now on macOS.

Who thought "easy to use" rhymed with "make the icons look like nearly identical and somewhat indistinguishable blue squares"? Who decided that an already rather unprofessional drawing of Tux needed to be transformed into Baby's First Vector Drawing™?

And why, when previous versions already did a semi-respectable job of at least _pretending_ to look like a native Cocoa app on macOS, does version 6 not only regress its implementation of the Aqua theme down to everything-is-grey but do so by getting rid of the gradient that emulated NSToolbar on most settings windows whilst then _adding_ ugly gradients to the list of VM settings on the main window in place of the vastly more functional rounded rectangles with separate headers of previous versions?

You see, if it's possible to regress the user interface so badly _when it was already fine_, I don't hold much hope for the rest of the technology. Call me a snob, but it reeks of sloppiness.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#43

Post by bakery2k »

Is anyone using VirtualBox on the desktop? Specifically, to run Linux/macOS/Windows guests on a macOS host?

Would you recommend it? Or is the best option VMware Fusion, Parallels, or something else?

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#44

Post by orf »

bakery2k wrote: post #43

Is anyone using VirtualBox on the desktop? Specifically, to run Linux/macOS/Windows guests on a macOS host? Would you recommend it? Or is the best option VMware Fusion, Parallels, or something else?

I've used Parallels before and found it amazing - fast, simple and easy.

It's not worth the cost unless you use it very frequently though.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#45

Post by octopoc »

bakery2k wrote: post #43

Is anyone using VirtualBox on the desktop? Specifically, to run Linux/macOS/Windows guests on a macOS host? Would you recommend it? Or is the best option VMware Fusion, Parallels, or something else?

I recently got a Mac and wanted to avoid the cost of Parallels, so I tried VirtualBox first. It was insanely slow. Like, I would be typing text into a VM and I would type a line, then wait and watch the characters appear. This happened on a 2018 Macbook Pro host with 32GB RAM. This happened on both Windows and Ubuntu guests.

So, I tried Parallels and it was so fast I can't really tell the difference between the host and guest in terms of speed. I highly recommend Parallels.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#46

Post by ikeboy »

dhimes wrote: post #41
giancarlostoro wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's awkward as hell. It's sad that their offering is the only decent one out there (for my needs and with that UX) that's at least got open source options. I hope VirtualPC from Microsoft becomes cross-platform and open sourced, or at least some sort of new VM software from Microsoft, since they seem to be doing a better job at offering up MIT licensed projects lately.

I wouldn't even mind shelling out $50 for a license if I needed one, but they won't let me. It takes $5000, because they require a purchase of 100 or more at a time. It feels like they don't want to spend time on small stuff, and really don't care.

Can also buy a socket license for 1k, or buy from resellers with lower MOQ: e.g. https://m.cdw.com/product/oracle-vm-virtualbox-enterprise-li...

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#47

Post by user5994461 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #18
krylon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vaguely recall that this was discussed here on HN a while ago and somebody who had actually tried to buy the necessary license reported that Oracle would not sell them the license; IIRC, the sales person told them to "just use it, we don't care", or something along those lines. Which is very problematic, of course, without something in writing, and given Oracle's reputation.

That's awkward as hell. It's sad that their offering is the only decent one out there (for my needs and with that UX) that's at least got open source options. I hope VirtualPC from Microsoft becomes cross-platform and open sourced, or at least some sort of new VM software from Microsoft, since they seem to be doing a better job at offering up MIT licensed projects lately.

VMWare does the same thing. No idea why you'd think Oracle is the only competitor.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#48

Post by lloeki »

robin_reala wrote: post #31
robert_foss wrote: post #10

Avoid VirtualBox and becoming trapped in the non-free & personal use only extension by using one of the very decent open source alternatives Boxes[1] or virt-manager[2] [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/action/show/Apps/Boxes [2] https://virt-manager.org/

Linux only by the looks of things though.

The equivalent on macOS would leverage Hypervisor.framework, like xhyve or Veertu.

https://github.com/machyve/xhyve

https://veertu.com/anka-technology/#hypervisor

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#49

Post by wyclif »

zapzupnz wrote: post #42

Holy cow, what an ugly user interface. I mean, it wasn't exactly a Matisse before, but it's just hideous now on macOS. Who thought "easy to use" rhymed with "make the icons look like nearly identical and somewhat indistinguishable blue squares"? Who decided that an already rather unprofessional drawing of Tux needed to be transformed into Baby's First Vector Drawing™? And why, when previous versions already did a sem…

I just downloaded/updated it for macOS and then set up a fresh Debian Stretch VM on it. Wow, you weren't kidding, it's still a hideous UI and it looks like they haven't even tried to make it look anything like a native app.

Re: VirtualBox 6.0 released

#50

Post by ikeboy »

porker wrote: post #9
tmn007 wrote: post #3

Be careful about VirtualBox Extensions which is non free on commercial environments. Oracle is hunting non compliance and VB provides them with lots of telemetry.

How do you license them? I've never seen a "Buy now" link, only the text about "Free for personal use" every time.

https://m.cdw.com/product/oracle-vm-virtualbox-enterprise-li...

$39.99, no minimum license count

Post reply on HN