Most people I know use virtualization software. But most of them cannot answer the question “why” - it seems like they use it just like a lot of people use a lot of software ‘just to have it’. I don’t understand, but hey, that’s me.

I have only one reason to be interested in virtualization: the ability to use test systems for development tasks. In daily life I work with unix a lot (mostly solaris/aix). So having a virtual sun box to try stuff out seems logical these days.

Not being interested in parallels or vmware because of the cost, I decided to gove Virtualbox a spin. Must be good stuff, I thought as the manufacturer has been aquired by Sun Microsystems (creator of sun solaris).

Working with virtualbox is nice. You can install all kinds of guest operating systems, but you can also download working snapshots you can attach to virtualbox as disk images. Easy to try out an operating system!

So I started with Gos (Google operating system, actually ubuntu with extras). And guess what? It’s a matter of a few clicks!

It doesn’t even matter where you place the vdi - but placing it in ~/Library/Virtualbox makes virtualbox see the vdi file immediately.

A few links:

VDI images source

Another good source for vdi images

Migrate vid to *real* linux

More soon!

What is your experience with Virtualbox?