Free Alternatives To Virtualbox For Mac

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If it hasn’t happened already, there will come a time when you’ll wish your computer was running a different operating system. Whether you’re a competent software developer or an average user desiring an application exclusive to an OS other than the one you have, there are plenty of valid reasons why you’d want to use another OS.

One of the best ways to do that is to use a virtual machine and as far as we’re concerned, the best virtual machine is Virtual Box. There are some others worth considering too, though. Read on to see why.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox is powerful, brimming with terrific features and, best of all, it’s free. It’s a lean piece of software requiring little more than a recent Intel or AMD processor that boasts seamless integration and switching capabilities within the host desktop. It’s also available on all major platforms, and features plain-text XML files for easy navigation. It remains coupled with special software packages designed to aid users with sharing folders and drives among guest and host operating systems.

The software functions nearly identically regardless of the host platform, and even offers 3D virtualization, multi-screen resolutions, and laudable hardware support, among other features. It’s not the quickest or most industrious when compared to similar offerings, but then again, you often get what you pay for.

VMware

VMware has been in the virtual machine game since 1998, and offers three different pieces of virtualization software: VMware Workstation Pro, VMware Fusion, and VMware Workstation Player.

The Workstation Pro package is ideal for professional users who desire a powerhouse virtual machine capable of simultaneously running applications on multiple guest operating systems. VMware’s Fusion, meanwhile, is a simpler application designed for home users who want to run Windows on their Mac machine. VMware Workstation Player, known until recently as VMware Player, is free for personal use, and caters to those looking to run virtual machines on their Windows or Linux systems.

None of the options are particularly simple to use, but the installation is quick, integration between operating systems is seamless, and the guest software runs at near-native speeds. Best of all, they remain the most stable and reliable options out there.

Parallels Desktop 14

When it comes to delivering the Windows experience to Mac users, Parallels Desktop 14 is, well, unparalleled. The latest incarnation of the software is compatible with the most recent version of MacOS, allowing you to emulate Windows XP, 7, 8, and 10 as a guest operating system. You can also conveniently run Mac and Windows applications side by side without rebooting, while also providing tools for quickly moving files between operating systems, launching programs directly from your Mac dock, and accessing cloud storage.

The software features a simple setup wizard for beginners, as well as supports Retina displays and advanced 3D graphics. Parallels can also emulate the Linux and Solaris operating systems, but the tightest integration is when it’s coupled with the latest version of Windows. Unfortunately, you’ll have to look elsewhere for more advanced tools and customization, but for most Mac users, Parallels is probably the best option.

Gnome Boxes

Gnome Boxes is a creation and management tool for virtualization that’s designed for Linux and can help you customize all kinds of virtualization tools, from specific workstation setups to enabling operating systems. The simple, elegant interface makes it easy to see what virtualization systems you have at any point, and how they are performing. If you’re looking for a user-friendly virtualization solution for Linux, give Gnome Boxes a shot: It plays especially well with QEMU and Virt Manager, which are ideal tools for more back-end work.

Boot Camp

Apple’s Boot Camp isn’t a virtual machine in any sense of the word, but it’s worth a mention given users researching virtual machines are often curious about it. The software, which is included on all Macs, allows users to dual boot both MacOS and Windows. Instead of emulating an operating system, Boot Camp helps you set up a partition on the hard drive so you can install the Windows operating system of your choice. Since it’s running directly off the hard drive, running Windows via Boot Camp leads to a far better experience than any virtual machine offers.

However, your disk space will be split in half, and you’ll be unable to run the best Mac applications and Windows apps side by side considering the software requires disk partitioning. You’ll also need to restart your computer every time you want to switch operating systems.

It’s worth noting that, while Boot Camp itself is not a virtual machine, you can run your Boot Camp partition as a virtual machine with Parallels 14 (outlined above). This gives you quick access to Windows when you want it within MacOS, and full performance when you’ve got enough time to restart your computer and boot up Windows directly.

Editors' Recommendations

Now It’s Easy To Build Virtual Machines Like A Pro There was a time when you could Google “virtual machine software,” and only VMware and Java would come up. But those days are long gone. Today, every server, network, security, and storage vendor has gotten into the virtualization business.

Nowadays, VMs can run on smartphones and tablets, and are even being used to And though VMware is my favorite, I wanted to be fair to readers and all the vendors who have virtual machine products. So I’m recommending anyone considering a career in virtualization, or businesses reviewing solutions for their new data center or private cloud, to test and evaluate more than just VMware products before deciding which is the best virtual machine for your future. Pick Your Favorite Color! Listed below are 11 flavors of VM software. Five will install on a desktop and can run various operating systems seamlessly within the same pane of glass.

Before we get started with our list of virtual machine software products for you to review, I’d like to recommend reading my new guide to the. This guide covers salary ranges, job skills, and online training options for beginners to learn how to set up, configure, and support virtual servers and desktops. There is even a free training for VirtualBox. Best Virtual Machines That Run on a Desktop OS 1. VMware Player is a FREEWARE for personal use software that will allow you to mount and run VMs directly from a Windows or Linux desktop.

Though it cannot create new VMs from an ISO, it is still a powerful virtual machine software. There is also a VMware Player Plus version with enhanced features, but it will require purchasing a license. Oracle VM VirtualBox is another cool FREE virtual machine software if you’re looking for an alternative to VMware Workstation. And it’s an excellent choice for beginners.

Great for lab testing and running from the desktop, VirtualBox installs on Windows, OS X, Solaris, and Linux. Unlike VM Player this FREEWARE allows the creation of new virtual machines from ISO or importing. And will run most 32 and 64bit operating systems as a VM. (Oracle also has OVM which is not listed in my top ten). VMware Workstation is a full-featured virtual machine software that requires licensing.

This software is for advanced users who require running multiple systems. For example, it works well for developers needing database, web and application servers all in the same virtual space. It also allows saving projects and cloning. VMware Workstation also interfaces with vSphere via an API and is fully supported by VMware.

And with too many features to list, I can say from experience it’s a robust solution for running virtual machines on a desktop. Parallels is a full-featured virtual machine software which began primarily to run a Windows virtual machine on Apple OS X. It was a great way to have both worlds and run Windows applications on a Mac. Interestingly, you can run Windows on a Mac now a couple of different ways, but legally you are still not allowed to run OS X on anything except Mac hardware.

Parallels require purchasing a license. 5. VMware Fusion requires obtaining a license too and is! $12.77 - $0.10 $12.67 Best Virtual Machine Software Products That Run on Server Hardware 6.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers has been around for a while and from what I can find it is used most by hosting companies for providing Virtual Private Servers aka VPS. But to be completely honest with you, I’ve never used it or worked anywhere Virtuozzo was deployed.

Click OK on the confirmation screen that appears. How to boot from usb to scan for virus on mac screen. You can then select remaining files and apply another action. Threats that cannot be repaired should be manually deleted. • Delete selected: permanently deletes selected files from the PC. • When you are finished selecting files, click Continue.and select Quit and restart computer to exit Avast Rescue Disk.

I’m not even aware of any business use cases running Virtuozzo for private cloud. Although after reading about it for this post, I would agree it seems like a good choice for hosting companies. (Microsoft Hyper-V) Once upon a time there was Microsoft VirtualPC, then there was Microsoft VirtualServer, and now there’s Microsoft Hyper-V. A couple of years ago I remembered going to a demo and watching Hyper-V crash, but since then a lot has changed.

Hyper-V can now do many of the same things most enterprise virtualization software boast about. Live migration, HA, templates, and importing VMs from VMware and EC2 using SystemCenter VMM.

The only real hang up is the lack of popularity with the Linux community Hyper-V works best with Windows operating systems, and it powers Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. XenServer (XenSource) is popular open sources virtual machine software that was acquired by Citrix. But then Citrix made the mistake of trying too hard to make a profit from XenSource and lost many of their key supporters in the process.

Since then Citrix has seen their error and has reopened the source code. XenServer is available for FREE, but you can also buy the fully supported version as well. It’s a robust solution used in many enterprise environments for hosting servers and desktop operating systems. And linked to XenCenter it can do just about everything vSphere can such as live migration, HA and importing and exporting VMs to the cloud. The critical need to know is. KVM (Kernel-Based Virtual Machine) is another of my favorites. I guess you can say it’s the second best choice.

KVM is a full virtualization solution for Linux and is found already on most Linux Distros. It’s preferred by more Linux guru’s than VMware or XenServer, and it fits perfectly into OpenStack. There are FREE or fully supported versions from RedHat, and it does all the cool stuff too.

But like Hyper-V with Linux, KVM has limits with virtualizing Windows. KVM’s popularity has been moving up on the list of virtual machine software’s due to its success with OpenStack. Marrying the 2 products together gives similar functionality as VMware vSphere, although there are some limitations with hosting Windows VMs, which are now taken care of by OpenStack’s ability to also support Hyper-V and ESXi. VMware ESXi does it all and more. For large enterprise virtual server deployments of Windows or Linux, VMware ESXi is the best solution in my opinion. I’ll tell you upfront it is not a cheap solution, but VMware does offer a FREE version of ESXi to get you hooked. And don’t expect too much from the FREE version because most of the valuable features rely on vCenter and shared storage integration, as well as licenses for HA, vMotion, DSR, and storage DRS.

Since the 90’s VMware has been evolving. It started as a clumsy little software that used to be installed on a Windows desktop. Then from there, it changed into GSX for Windows Servers.

And then again it morphed into ESX which eliminated the need for Windows and booted to a Redhat kernel. And later in version 4, it became ESXi which now runs on a custom Linux kernel. VMs on ESXi run Windows and Linux operating systems near flawlessly. Arduino mega 2560 driver for mac. It’s also a powerhouse for many sizeable virtual desktop deployments running on VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop. And more recently VMware was in the news because they will soon power Google’s Chrome virtual desktop cloud and provide access to Windows application. How cool is that!

VMware Engineers are well paid and in some datacenters, they run the show. Designing and building software defined datacenters consisting of best-of-brands servers, network and storage hardware. With dedication and, you could become a vSphere expert and join in the fun. A final highlight about ESXi is that it is used in the majority of private clouds. And more recently many public clouds have been offerings services that allow flexing private vSphere infrastructure directly to public vSphere infrastructure. Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure ( New Product Update) A while back, I met with Andy Ng to see a demo of Nutanix Hyperconverged Infrastructure.

Once upon a time Andy was my top VMware Engineer and he’s mentioned in my eBook, During the Nutanix demo, Andy did what he does better than anyone I know – he drew a full stack of Nutanix on the whiteboard and covered the hyperconverged technology from end to end. I was intrigued by Andy’s presentation of hyperconvergence. For more information see the results of Gartner’s Peer Insights:. Some folks say Nutanix is the solution to the VMware tax. To sum up my meeting in terms that someone who understands vSphere might understand, think of a 3 node ESXi cluster with VSAN and NSX all wrapped together. Basically, storage, network and compute are all bundled together in a hyperconverged elastic cluster that runs virtual servers on an open source hypervisor.

Nutanix is where I would start testing if I was building a new data center from scratch Nutanix has an enterprise software and hardware version that’s fully supported, and they also offer an open source software only version. Free Virtual Machine Tutorial To Get You Started. Vrtualbox is an alternative to using VMware or when the old days you would use Virtual PC. It allows 64-bit operating systems and Irving and especially for testing 2013 and are more advanced nav features. It’s a great product because it also performs very well.

So I’ve already downloaded the VirtualBox here so I would just go through the install. And it’s one of those simple ones is just like those next-next-next. It will give you a warning here that it actually will shut down the network interface for a short second. It’s not different than what virtual preceded. It’s just if you’re running a live environment you have to be careful that it actually will stop all machines to make sure you have access to the Internet. So it’s really only for production purposes. So when I’m basically finished installing it so it was a very very simple process.

The next thing I want to show here is actually how to install a Windows 7 inside this one. To create a new computer here and I just called this one Windows 7. And it’s based on my text on Mac and figured out that it was actually going to be Windows 7 down here so that’s fine but that’s important because selecting the right type down here is going to have the supporting software installed as driver inside of ratings so if you’re installing 2008 or Windows 8 or something like that one. Remember to pick the right version down here of Windows.

It also supports Linux and all kinds of other things in yeah so but I’ll just say next and I want a little more memory than this one so I’ll use for gate you create a virtual drive and it actually shares the VHD format that is the same as Virtual PC users and also hyper-v. But I’ll just use internal format. I don’t think there’s much difference in speed but I guess interim format is best supported so I had a 25 gig default down here since I go into the install nav and all kinds of things in here. I actually going to bump this up to a little more 40 gigabytes in here as being my hard drive and it’s a will create this one my e drivers actually in this case.

It’s a solid-state drive and that’s why I already configured it earlier to use as my default. Go in and say yes and create this one. Before I start the installations one thing I’m going to do in here is actually changing my amount of processes because it’s going to install Windows a lot faster if I actually give it more CPUs in here. This one is a pretty powerful computer it’s a core i7 and is actually running at a higher speed than moderate nominalist so it’s running gigahertz and it has eight threads and four cores. I just going to give this computer for I’m now ready to start my installation the next thing I have to do is select my image and I have Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 in here. That’s a download from TechNet from Microsoft that I have this ISO file from so go ahead and open that one and then I’ll just start the install in here. And there are only a few things I will need to do to actually get this fully installed.

Oh during this install process and it’s fine I want to install it now. Until you install the VirtualBox additions in here the mouse can be a little sluggish especially if you’re on a remote desktop environment but I just want to see my 40 gig hard drive. Just click Next and now it’s expanding the windows files the first percent here takes a little longer. The total process of installing windows in here is probably going to be six-seven minutes in total but I going to remove some of this recording here. If I look at one of the reasons this computer is so fast as it is it’s running a Core I7 on new version and is actually has been slightly overclocked so it’s currently on gigahertz down here so that’s a process this one works fine also on a laptop it just won’t get this tremendously fast speed that this one is this computer has two solid-state drives in it also so it has a solid-state C drive on 64 gigabytes as a second solid-state drive also on 64 gigabytes. And if I go take a look at it here I’ll have my C Drive and my E drive is solid States. And then I have a two terabyte drive in here it’s a motherboard that already comes with graphics cards and a 16 gig of ram in here.

So this computer the cost less than thousand dollars like sure to buy an example from parts and it’s extremely powerful for running a virtual box or any testing with the 2009 and 2013. Now finished the first part we’re actually covering all the files. It’s now completing the installation here of Windows 7 and I will be able to soon type in the computer name and then install the VirtualBox additions that will make the drivers and Windows work. The really good thing about the VirtualBox is that is completely free it even works on multiple versions. So if you had a Linux server you could actually also run VirtualBox same environment as this here so where it’s now booting Windows for the first time for real after installing it so put in the username I’ll just call this one Windows 7.

I have to type in a password and a hint so same password cause I don’t need to put in a Windows key and since it’s so faster install I would just blow away this one when windows actually half-hour months won’t work any longer it’s all for testing anyway. I use the recommended setting I’ll go select Eastern time zone. Top 11 VM Software Alternatives (Try Them Out!) As you can see, there are many options and features to choose from when considering the best virtual machine software that performs hardware virtualization. And aside from my obvious bias for VMware, here’s what you need to ask yourself:. Will it be for running on a desktop?. Will it be for running Windows on a Linux OS or OS X?.

Will it be for testing and learning or production?. Will it be for hosting VPS or building a cloud?.

Will it need to support HA, live migrations, and transition to the public cloud?. Will it be a virtual machine software for a desktop or a server?. Will it be for Windows or Linux, or Windows and Linux?. Will it be a free VM software?.

Will it be a VMware alternative? So whether you’re running one instance of Windows on a Mac, or hosting hundreds of Windows or Linux VMs on in a data center, there’s an alternative for the best virtual machines for you. Done For You Virtual Machine Over the last year, I’ve spent days testing and reviewing multiple virtual private server platforms for the best VPS option. If you don’t want to deal with installing software on a desktop or server, and you just want a VM to run your application now, then these 3 done for you virtual machine software solutions are guaranteed to work. More Related VM Topics:. Honesty Disclosure: VMinstall.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, and other Amazon stores worldwide Ads and prices last updated on 2019-02-23 at 12:03. I have 1,000s of WTV files my parents watch and re-watch.

There is no support for this on Win8 (not unless you upgrade to Pro then buy the WMC add-on), and it won’t be supported in Win10. The trouble is these files are off free-to-air stations created using a Win7 HTPC with a USB tuner capturing DVB-T TV stations over several years. I’ve tried down-converting them to DVRMS format (the earlier Windows PVR format) then into MP4s but they then loose their Closed Caption subtitles that are essential for anyone hard of hearing. And the clever way Series Recording was done in WMC is second to none (I’ve tried several FreeView PVRs from well known manufacturers, and all had to be returned to the store). How might I run Win7 Home Premium with Window Media Centre in virtual mode on a new Win10 laptop? October 8, 2015. Hi Joe, I’ve just scrape installed Windows (8.1 Pro x64) on my old Latitude E6520 (from Win 7 Pro x64, after Check Point stopped it from booting).

My IT support guys decided it would be best to update because they couldn’t supply a Win 7 Product Key!) So as I have a nice clean build, I thought I’d go the VM route as well. However I was advised to use either Parallels or Fusion, even after remarking they both appear to be purely for Macs to run Windows! 0.o (correct me if I’m wrong) I’m thinking all I really need is Hyper-V?

(for free 🙂 as all I really want is to have disposable VM(s) I can install the weird & wonderful onto, then replace it if it breaks. However, it sounds like I need another OS licence for the VM, even though it’s the exact same one as the host OS, on the same hardware! Cheers, DD December 17, 2015.

Sorry about the late timing!!!! I just bought a Panasonic cf-52 laptop with Win 10 PRO running on a Windows Vista COA. Well, I’d like to think your last statement STILL holds true for my efforts. Can you confirm this? I’m primarily interested in running old OS’s such as WIN XP. Or older windows OS’swho knows maybe some DR-DOS files and.apps.

I’m thinking I can stay away from migration and dedicated server machines and all that goes along with security issues. Thanks for any feed back. Ronoforange dec 15 2017 December 15, 2017. Hi Ron, Thanks for the question. Yes – if the installed OS is Win10 and you are running Vista as a VM, which is the original OS and using the license key that is from the sticker on the laptop, then the OEM license can be run on the same hardware as a VM. But note – XP, and Vista are both no longer supported by Microsoft with security patches.

Also, note, if your laptop hardware is 64 bit then you can go 64, 32 or 16 bit OS. Whereas, if you are installing VirtualBox on a 32 bit CPU and plan to go to 64 bit OS then VB will grey out the option for using these VM configs. But you can use 32 bit and lower. And for DOS, I found this YouTube video for you for running DOS on VirtualBox. Sounds like you have plans for a lot of fun. Joe December 16, 2017.