VirtualBox
What Is VirtualBox?
VirtualBox is hypervisor software that runs another OS inside an OS. For example, you can start VirtualBox on Windows and run a Linux-based OS such as CentOS or Ubuntu, or another version of Windows, as a VM (Virtual Machine).
Other hypervisors include VMware, KVM, Hyper-V, and Xen. VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and other platforms. In VirtualBox, you can run operating systems such as Linux, Windows, Mac OS X Server, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD.
The license is GPLv2. It was originally developed by innotek, then acquired by Sun Microsystems, and later acquired by Oracle. Oracle continues to develop it today. Its official name is Oracle VM VirtualBox.
Features of VirtualBox
One of VirtualBox’s features is its ease of use on the desktop. If you install VirtualBox Additions on the guest OS, you can integrate mouse behavior with the window manager on the host OS side. This allows smooth mouse movement. The clipboard can also be shared between the guest OS and host OS, so copy and paste or cut and paste can be performed normally.
For screen display, the following three modes are supported.
- Scaled mode
- A mode where the guest OS runs in a virtual machine window.
- Full-screen mode
- Uses the entire screen to display the guest operating system.
- Seamless mode
- Displays the guest OS integrated into the host OS window. Each GUI application appears on the screen like an application running on the host OS.
Direct3D also works, although it is an experimental implementation.
Because of these features, VirtualBox is suitable for desktop use rather than server virtualization.
Installing VirtualBox
To install VirtualBox, download it from the following site.
Double-click the downloaded file to install it.