VirtualBox is garbage • Hacker News Board

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#31

Post by ch0wn » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:09 PM UTC

Spyro7 wrote: post #7

The link in the parent is https, try this regular http link if you can't read the article: http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/10/6/317

Or this if it still does not load: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lkml.or...

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#32

Post by hackermom » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:10 PM UTC

Apart from VirtualBox being notably slower (and less complete in working D3D/OpenGL support) than f.e. Parallels Desktop, I can't say I've had any gripes or stability issues with it, barring a recent, short-lived bug that caused VBox to automatically power down an active VM as soon as it went idle. I've been using VBox on OS X for a bit over 2 years now, for development purposes related to Windows XP, OpenBSD, one or two Linux distributions, and even Haiku.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#33

Post by bajsejohannes » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:10 PM UTC

VirtualBox is a fantastic piece of software. Just because it's not perfect, doesn't mean it's garbage. Far from it.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#34

Post by viraptor » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:11 PM UTC

WhatDoIKnow wrote: post #20

I've used it for years on Ubuntu and Windows with almost no issues. This headline is garbage.

Not necessarily. You're presenting a data point only, while the poster of the patch marked the module CRAP for a specific reason - that module produced too many bug reports which are not relevant to the distributions since they originate in vboxdrv. From that perspective vboxdrv is garbage and people who deal with that problem agree.

Data point is as relevant as "I keep crossing on red light for years now and nothing bad happened".

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#35

Post by lt » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:15 PM UTC

WhatDoIKnow wrote: post #20

I've used it for years on Ubuntu and Windows with almost no issues. This headline is garbage.

These are kernel developers saying that the majority of crash reports they receive are caused by the virtual box driver.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#36

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:18 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #21

wccrawford wrote: post #10

A slightly less caustic way of saying it would be to say that bug reports from things running on virtual box are garbage.

I read it as being that the hosts themselves are the ones generating garbage bug reports, rather than the virtualized OS's? Otherwise, yours would be a much better title for this.

[deleted]

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#37

Post by ohyes » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:20 PM UTC

Not Garbage. Default configuration is not optimal, however.

I use it all the time on Windows XP to run Ubuntu.

Initially, I did have a few problems because I didn't have Ubuntu or Virtualbox configured correctly. Also, I wasn't using 'VBOXADDITIONS,' which actually are extremely useful and important.

Some quick googling fixed my problems, in any case and I don't have any problems with it anymore.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#38

Post by larrik » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:35 PM UTC

[deleted] wrote: post #36

larrik wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as being that the hosts themselves are the ones generating garbage bug reports, rather than the virtualized OS's? Otherwise, yours would be a much better title for this.

[deleted]

I thought vboxdrv, which is listed in the bug reports, is the host machine process??

I can certainly be wrong about this...

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#39

Post by sp332 » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

larrik wrote: post #38

[deleted] wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I thought vboxdrv, which is listed in the bug reports, is the host machine process?? I can certainly be wrong about this...

Whoops, I guess you're right. Never mind.

Re: VirtualBox is garbage

#40

Post by lloeki » Fri, Oct 07, 2011, 2:48 PM UTC

wladimir wrote: post #14

Virtualbox works fine for me. Though I only use it to run Windows XP so I'm probably not a demanding customer, but calling it garbage is kind of over-the top. It's very useful for me for running some windows-only software that refuses to work in Wine, and to test my sw on windows without having to reboot...

Virtualbox works fine for you (And me too, apparently). But it visibly does not for many, as vboxdrv makes things crash in such volume that it spams bug reporting databases enough for someone to be pissed out enough by that fact to put together a patch containing creative names. Also enough (yet probably not vbox specific but it sure masks vboxdrv data) that Debian, Suse and RHEL took proactive measures to flag all out of tree modules.