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Virtual Box 5.1

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Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#51

Post by frostmatthew »

FireBeyond wrote: post #36
StevePerkins wrote: post #11

With Oracle's rocky reputation around open source, I'm surprised that VirutalBox is still going strong and under active development. There doesn't seem to be any kind of commercial "enterprise version" that they license for big bucks... what is their incentive for keeping this thing going?

It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion, and Parallels (at least in the Vagrant, etc, ecosystem) has always been a second class citizen). Not to mention that Parallels licensing is a pain. I understand license key activation as at times a necessary evil but in cases where you are developing a product for use primarily by developers who may frequently re-install their computer, could…

> It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion

As I commented elsewhere[1] (and in more detail) in this thread Fusion/Workstation is not discontinued/abandoned.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085845

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#52

Post by frostmatthew »

kgwgk wrote: post #45
Scarbutt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where do you get vmware fusion was discontinued?

At least the people behind it is gone. I was discussed in HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10978672

> the people behind it is gone

Development switched to different people/teams but that doesn't mean it's not under active development. Meet the new team: http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#53

Post by frostmatthew »

xenadu02 wrote: post #48
Scarbutt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where do you get vmware fusion was discontinued?

Management fired the entire HostesUI team and shipped bare-minimum maintenance to India.

> shipped bare-minimum maintenance to India

The development team is not in India and is doing more than bare-minimum maintenance, they have "a great surprise lined up for Q3, something very interesting for Q4, and something very big for H1"[1]

[1] http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#54

Post by frostmatthew »

nickjj wrote: post #34
frostmatthew wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just want to be able to run xubuntu 16.x (and newer when it comes out) in Unity mode Apparently Workstation 12 removed Unity mode for Linux guests because it was rarely used[1] - I'm just speculating (I don't work in End User Computing) but I imagine that was based on Customer Experience Improvement Program (a.k.a. telemetry) data (I know some people prefer to opt-out of participating but the information is usefu…

My question was in reference to the Player version, not Workstation. Does that make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

> Does that make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

Not really (also, post-7 Player has been re-branded "Workstation Player"[1], presumably so the relationship to Workstation is clearer).

[1] https://www.vmware.com/products/player

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#55

Post by kgwgk »

frostmatthew wrote: post #52
kgwgk wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least the people behind it is gone. I was discussed in HN at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10978672

> the people behind it is gone Development switched to different people/teams but that doesn't mean it's not under active development. Meet the new team: http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...

Great, I'm glad Fusion is alive.

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#56

Post by kelvin0 »

ygra wrote: post #21
kelvin0 wrote: post #18

"... better support for Python 3". Why does VB need to better support a specific executable, namely python 3? Anyone have more technical details on this?

VirtualBox offers a Python API (among others): http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch11.html .

OK, Python for using their VM's API. Yes, that rings a bell. However, from the notes it seemed like something they modified in the VM to better support python with the guest OS ... did not make sense until. Thanks!

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#57

Post by nickjj »

frostmatthew wrote: post #54
nickjj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question was in reference to the Player version, not Workstation. Does that make a difference in the grand scheme of things?

> Does that make a difference in the grand scheme of things? Not really (also, post-7 Player has been re-branded "Workstation Player"[1], presumably so the relationship to Workstation is clearer). [1] https://www.vmware.com/products/player

I mean the free version of Player, not the Pro version.

(Not trolling you either, this conversation is just a side effect of your company's naming conventions haha)

Basically I'm asking if the free Player version is going to get continued to be updated so it supports modern Linux guests?

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#58

Post by frostmatthew »

nickjj wrote: post #57
frostmatthew wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does that make a difference in the grand scheme of things? Not really (also, post-7 Player has been re-branded "Workstation Player"[1], presumably so the relationship to Workstation is clearer). [1] https://www.vmware.com/products/player

I mean the free version of Player, not the Pro version. (Not trolling you either, this conversation is just a side effect of your company's naming conventions haha) Basically I'm asking if the free Player version is going to get continued to be updated so it supports modern Linux guests?

> I'm asking if the free Player version is going to get continued to be updated so it supports modern Linux guests

Your original question (and my response) seemed to ask specifically about Unity with regards to Linux. As for more general support of new/future Linux versions my assumption would be that will continue (but that's just my guess as a random engineer in a completely unrelated business unit, you may want to reach out to the Workstation team via Twitter/Facebook/forum for an informed and official answer).

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#59

Post by methehack »

rpgmaker wrote: post #47
methehack wrote: post #38

There's some negativity around this product on this thread, but honestly I'm really glad Virtual Box is around and under active development. I have both an active linux and os x env for dev and I use virtual box to manage and switch between. It's been super useful, very reliable, fast enough, and, btw, it's free.

Do you just have a vanilla OSX VM installation or do you optimize it in some way? For me OSX is very slow on vbox on a very decently spec'ed VM. Far from my experience with Windows guests.

My OS X install is native; my linux is vbox. So OS X is the host.

Re: Virtual Box 5.1

#60

Post by tw04 »

arthurfm wrote: post #50
FireBeyond wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion, and Parallels (at least in the Vagrant, etc, ecosystem) has always been a second class citizen). Not to mention that Parallels licensing is a pain. I understand license key activation as at times a necessary evil but in cases where you are developing a product for use primarily by developers who may frequently re-install their computer, could…

> It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion It doesn't look like Fusion has been discontinued. [1] "The Fusion and Workstation teams are having a very busy year. Since we shipped Fusion 8 and Workstation 12 almost a year ago, we’ve been busy adding new skills to the development teams so that we can take the products in a new and compelling direction. Added to that, the team has releas…

My understanding is they gutted the entire fusion and workstation teams (firing all US employees), and shipped it over to China for long-term maintenance. That blog post kind of confirms it... the core team working on ESX is in the US, the "Hosted-UI" - fusion and workstation teams - all appear to be Chinese. To say that the core ESX components are the base and the Hosted-UI team just puts a UI on top seems preposterous to me. If that's the case I would expect a lockstep release of all the products, and the same feature functionality if all they're doing is adding a GUI. That's simply not the case.
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