[Xastir] Time to discard VMware as an option?

[Ray Wells]

The OSE version is crippled but the package version from the VB website 
is not. You need to install Guest Additions and USB works fine. I use 
both memory stick and two USB printers.

Ray vk2tv

Tom Russo wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 07:57:25AM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <davidf4 at mindspring.com> flavor, containing:
>   
>> The other day I decided to go ahead and get the latest version of VMware 
>> Player to stop the "there's a new version do you want to get it?" prompt.
>>
>> Well, you now have to create a userid/password on their site in order to 
>> download the latest version and, while it has several improvements over 
>> their last version, it also won't install on older non-PAE cpus (so my 
>> Dell D600 Centrino is locked out).
>>
>> I think that VMware has become aware of the popularity and is on the way 
>> towards shutting down access to the player.  I also don't like the fact 
>> that older machines that have the horsepower and memory are now locked out.
>>     
>
> Feh.  
>
>   
>> So, is it time to dump them and go to some other VM system?
>>     
>
> There's always Sun VirtualBox.  The Open Source Edition is somewhat crippled
> (e.g. no USB support in the OSE) but so far as I have seen it's a solid 
> virtualization option, and the OSE has most of the capability to create
> virtual machines.
>
> It can also run VMs made for VMWare to some extent, because it supports the
> vmdk disk format.  Windows VMs are a problem and need special treatment 
> moving from vmware to virtualbox, but I think linux might be less of one.
> I might try this weekend to see if the Xastir-Hardy vm runs in virtualbox
> unmodified.
>
>