Recently I decided to look at free virtual machine software. I have used the commercial VMWare in the past and that is my benchmark. The host machine is running Windows XP SP3.

1. Microsoft Virtual PC 2007

Virtual PC 2007 only runs on Windows operating systems. It installed easily and I installed a Win2K client on it without any problems — as you might expect.

It supposedly installs ‘other’ operating systems and with much huffing and puffing I managed to install Ubuntu — unusably slow. A complete waste of time.

2. VirtualBox

VirtualBox has been bought by Sun and they recently released a new version — 1.6

For starters, they have versions for hosting on Windows, Mac OS X and a wide range of flavours of Linux. My recollection of an earlier version of Virtual Box was that it was fairly unexciting. Well, not this one — it is very slick.

The interface is reminicient of VMWare. They support a wide range of client operating systems. I installed Win2K and Ubuntu clients easily and quickly.

Compared to Microsoft Virtual PC both client systems ran much faster (especially Ubuntu).

Conclusion: Give VMWare the flick (on Windows at least). I reckon this is a better product — easier to install and use — than VMWare.

WARNING: Don’t attempt to install VirtualBox on a Xen-enable linux kernel — it will mess up your kernel.