alternatives to vmware

Post by **saurabh** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:39 am

what are the all of the alternatives to VMware, i know there is microsoft virtual pc...?

Post by **hjort** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:08 am

Bochs, Qemu, and my favorite VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/

Post by **RentedMule** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:15 am

Just to add my two cents...

VMWare is a virtualizer. Meaning none of your intructions are emulated, where as Virtual PC and Bochs are pretty much pure emulation.

Post by **ZSS9393** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 12:51 pm

Virtual pc for Windows isn't an emulator. It's a virtualizer, like VMWare. Virtual PC for Mac, of course, is an emulator.

Post by **Xammer** » Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:57 pm

There are also Bochs, QEMU, DOSBox (it can boot floppies), Flopper etc.

Post by **empireum** » Fri Jun 22, 2007 12:38 am

Parallels Desktop is also a virtualizer. Available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (Intel).

Post by **LeoNatan** » Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:57 am

Parallels is the best IMO. Fastest, and most compatible with Linux distributions out of the box.

Post by **thenico** » Thu Jun 28, 2007 9:38 pm

I use Qemu with KQEMU enabled.
The guest network card is bridged to host network card with this /etc/qemu-ifup·

Code: Select all

$ cat /etc/qemu-ifup
#!/bin/sh
echo Going to add $1 to br0 ...
sudo -p "Password for $0:" /sbin/ifconfig $1 up
sudo brctl addif br0 $1

I usually use these argument: -net nic -net tap -m 196 -serial stdio
It is not user friendly but i hate spend time with GUI.

Post by **mdogg** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:30 am

On Windows, Virtual PC is a virtualizer
On Mac however, Virtual PC emulates the Intel CPUs and therefore is very slow. Virtual PC for Mac is only for PowerPC CPUs. This is why it has to emulate the CPU. If Microsoft weren't so stubborn and biased, we might have a good Virtual PC for Intel Mac that's free like the Windows version.

This is also why emulating the PowerPC CPU is slow as well. (PearPC)

Post by **Oerg** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 1:46 am

I'd say Qemu, there are also some GUIs and Frontends out for it. VMware IMO does not have great driver support for older operating systems.

But, i'd go to Microsoft Virtual PC, because it's very fast AND it has hardware that is compatible with old operating systems, like the Intel 21140 NIC, where you can get DOS packet drivers, WFW Drivers for. This card is supported by all 32-bit OSs because they got the driver integrated AFAIK (not sure if this applies to OS/2, too.). S3Trio -> great support for Windows NT3.x and Windows 3.x. Sound blaster 16 also.

Sad that Windows 3.0 does not work without workarounds.

Greets
Oerg

EDIT: Qemu emulates also other varieties of CPU Platforms, like x86_64, PPC and so on.

Post by **empireum** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:35 am

Virtual PC has been substantially slower than VMware for me. Also, VMware's features are clearly superior to VirtualPC's. The fact that VMware is available for Windows, Linux/BSD and OS X is also a winner for me. You're correct about older OSes, though. For NT 3.5x, some drivers are available, but for Windows 3.x, for example...

Post by **Rhykin** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:30 am

Since no one posted the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... l_machines

Very useful (if you haven't seen it yet).

Post by **blahsucks-two** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 12:58 pm

I've heard it said that Virtual PC is better with older OSes, while VMware is superior with newer ones. Consider that:

Virtual PC has Additions for NT 3.51 and other older OSes, and its emulated video card is a relatively standard S3 Trio. In contrast, VMware uses a special SVGA-II card that doesn't exist in the real world. (Parallels supports OS/2 and some other old stuff too, AFAIK, but it's not free)

VMware has functional 3D acceleration to a point, as does Parallels. VMware also probably has more corporate support, as well as a larger community (unofficial VMware tools for various OSes exist, along with disk images for several Linux distros).

Of course, if you're not using Windows, Virtual PC isn't even an option (well, except for PPC Mac users, but it's undoubtedly the best offering on that platform). Both of them are solid products. As for Parallels, I think it's a little shady, but that's my opinion. Qemu and Virtual Box aren't as fast, but they're open and are easier to convert to and from.

Post by **Frozenport** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 4:15 pm

I like how VMware can do x64...

Post by **blahsucks-two** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 5:58 pm

Does Virtual PC have multiprocessor support yet? I know it's in Virtual Server 2005, but support for that has been in VMware products for years. It's even in player..

Post by **empireum** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:58 pm

blahsucks-two wrote:Does Virtual PC have multiprocessor support yet? I know it's in Virtual Server 2005, but support for that has been in VMware products for years. It's even in player..

AFAIK, no.

Post by **blahsucks-two** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 1:40 am

Also, in regard to older OSes -- I have Windows NT 3.51 and Windows 3.11 semi-working in VMware.

I found a bunch of drivers for 3.11 over here: http://vmware0.tripod.com/index.htm. The network card VMware uses is an AMD PCnet card, which isn't that hard to find a driver for. You can't use the built-in NT 3.51 one; you need to use an update from the AMD site.

In NT 3.51, I used the VBEMP driver for universal VESA graphics. There's a patch to the 3.11 SVGA driver somewhere.

There are also the free vmw, vmshrink, and vmftp available at: http://chitchat.at.infoseek.co.jp/vmware/vmtools.html - vmw does various things, including clipboard migration and mouse tracking. Vmshrink will compact the hard disk, and vmftp will access shared folders. They run in various OSes, including DOS and Win32 command line.

Post by **Skyfrog** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 5:56 am

This is not really an alternative to VMware but since we are talking about emulators I noticed that no one has mentioned MESS, it emulates several old PCs as well as dozens of other computers. Some work very well, others barely at all but it's worth looking into if you want to run very old software. CP/M, DOS and earlier though, it won't run modern stuff like Windows.

Personally I like Virtual PC 2007 the best, runs most everything I've tried on it from CP/M-86 to XP. I never could get OS/2 1.0 to work on it though (or any other emulator).