It's just me...but I get irritated.

Story: What Sucks Worse than Oracle's VirtualBox?Total Replies: 28
Author Content
Ridcully

Jun 28, 2011
6:45 AM EDT
In point of fact, this writer is having a very positive rave about Virtual Box. I don't use it myself - no need; but I get mildly irritated to see an obvious "attention drawing headline" being negative but actually headlining a highly positive article. I suppose it's a feature of getting antique and less willing to "go with the flow". But honestly, if the software is great, and that's what Ken Hess is apparently indicating, why not darn well say so instead of trying to get viewers in by using what I call rather "crass language"......And that doesn't suck Ken - ooops, pardon me, I'm infected now. :-).
jdixon

Jun 28, 2011
7:12 AM EDT
Well, between Virtualbox and VMware Server, it's pretty much a toss-up. Now, the fully open source OSE version of Virtualbox doesn't have a VMware equivalent, but it also has several designed in limitations.
tracyanne

Jun 28, 2011
7:26 AM EDT
Quoting:In point of fact, this writer is having a very positive rave about Virtual Box. I don't use it myself - no need; but I get mildly irritated to see an obvious "attention drawing headline" being negative but actually headlining a highly positive article.


Typical click baiting by Ken Hess.

I use VirtualBox, I really like, it's what I run Windows in... keeps Windows nice and stable. I also use it for testing other Linux based OSs.
dinotrac

Jun 28, 2011
7:44 AM EDT
I have to agree with the thumbs-up for VirtualBox. I've got it running Windows on my Workstation...and... I've got it running Linux on a client-provided Windows notebook.

Nice piece of software.
Fettoosh

Jun 28, 2011
8:07 AM EDT
Thanks to Sun Microsystems:

VirtualBox made dual booting mostly unnecessary and made migration to Linux much easier for those who still need to run Windows only applications.

With all its mistakes, Sun was a big contributor to FOSS.



.
dinotrac

Jun 28, 2011
8:34 AM EDT
@fettoosh --

Yes, but...

Do all of its mistakes encourage Oracle to go the other way? After all, Oracle makes a ton of money, while Sun is...now a part of Oracle.
Fettoosh

Jun 28, 2011
9:15 AM EDT
Quoting:Do all of its mistakes encourage Oracle to go the other way?


I am not sure about that, but one thing is for sure is that Oracle was never convinced of Open Source being a good business strategy for it.

Hopefully, the recent fork of OpenOffice will convince them and encourage them to learn from IBM on how to leverage FOSS in their business without being perceived as its enemy.

Forking Red Hat Linux was a stupid move, and granting OpenOffice to Apache is an indication that they are learning (actually they had no choice).

ComputerBob

Jun 28, 2011
9:15 AM EDT
Quoting:But honestly, if the software is great, and that's what Ken Hess is apparently indicating, why not darn well say so instead of trying to get viewers in by using what I call rather "crass language"
That, along with many, many other examples of his writing that we have discussed, begs the question, "What sucks worse than Ken Hess' journalistic integrity?"
TxtEdMacs

Jun 28, 2011
9:34 AM EDT
CB,

Quoting:"What sucks worse than Ken Hess' journalistic integrity?"


That just has to be a trick question.

YBT
dinotrac

Jun 28, 2011
11:19 AM EDT
@cb --

His humility and winning way with people?
jdixon

Jun 28, 2011
11:28 AM EDT
> "What sucks worse than Ken Hess' journalistic integrity?"

Txt's shilling checks from Microsoft?
dinotrac

Jun 28, 2011
11:42 AM EDT
@jdixon --

Not so much as the fact that he doesn't share!
skelband

Jun 28, 2011
12:33 PM EDT
Same here for VirtualBox. I use it on my Mac for Windows and Linux. Hardly any problems and the performance is good.
skelband

Jun 28, 2011
1:29 PM EDT
I just read the article and am a bit confused over the title.

The conclusion of the author seems to be that apart from a couple of minor quibbles, it's great and he uses it all the time.

Weird.
jimbauwens

Jun 28, 2011
2:19 PM EDT
Ken wrote:What Sucks Worse than Oracle's VirtualBox? Everything.
I kinda disagree with this...
Koriel

Jun 28, 2011
2:35 PM EDT
VirtualBox sadly lacks one feature that is essential to my work and others Parallel Port support. Lots of folks have complained, Sun did nothing and I suspect Oracle will do nothing their are a lot of folks that have to support legacy software out there that use hideous "parallel port dongles" usually made by Sentinel.

Even if they were now to add it, I would probably not use it now due to the attitude that was shown towards requests for this feature so I purchased VMWare which works great although can be pain to maintain during kernel changes but something i will have to live with if i want to make a living.

Their is a 3 page thread on the subject here

PPort Thread

Ignore the claims that it works on a Linux host it doesn't, it just shows up in devices and the code behind it is only partially written.

As for the article if the only complaint he has is between Bridged & NAT then the guy needs to get out more.

Real reasons for not using VB and not pansy networking issues that can be fixed at the click of a mouse are as above, do i sound bitter :)





jdixon

Jun 28, 2011
3:03 PM EDT
> ...so I purchased VMWare which works great...

It's my experience that VMware (I've used VMware Server) is the more robust and feature complete of the two. Virtualbox seems to be faster and may offer better video support for games (though I've never been able to get that feature to work). Virtualbox also has the somewhat crippled fully open source edition. That's never been that big a selling point for me, but it is for others. I have never had to use the parallel port, so I didn't know Virtualbox didn't support it.
Koriel

Jun 28, 2011
3:38 PM EDT
VMWare is very robust, Its enterprise origins show thus it is not really suitable for gaming as its 3D support is experimental.

My main use is for running an old SCADA application Intellution Fix HDMI 7.1 for Win NT and with some additional software of my own making, Win XP. The app uses a dongle and won't even startup even in demo mode unless it sees a working parallel port.

This stuff is still in regular use on various oil rigs around the world, if aint broke dont fix it rules in that environment. In order to support all of the various OS+App configurations virtualisation is my only option and without parallel port support VMWare is my only option.

BernardSwiss

Jun 28, 2011
5:10 PM EDT
Ok, I don't know a lot about virtualization, but it seemed to me (and apparently you guys agree) to be pretty decent article.

And yeah, the title was somewhat provocative. But the very first sentence of the article answered the title question "What Sucks Worse than Oracle's VirtualBox?" with a single single word -- "Everything".

A little too cute ? Perhaps. People here don't like the author much? Well, clearly not -- and I assume that he's earned the disdain he receives. But I seriously doubt it would have been worth commenting, if a less dis-liked author had come up with this too-precious intro. After all, it's not like this particular article was one of those clever "FUD with faint praise" pieces we see all to often.

If no one wants to congratulate the guy on a relatively good (possibly surprisingly so) article -- that's the way it goes. But is there any really any point making mountains out of molehills and attacking articles we actually agree with, at the risk of reinforcing all the "Linux zealot" stereotypes? Might it not just encourage the kinds of bad behaviour -- and shoddy journalism -- we have cause to complain about?

Just saying...

Ridcully

Jun 28, 2011
6:03 PM EDT
Quoting:I use VirtualBox, I really like, it's what I run Windows in... keeps Windows nice and stable. I also use it for testing other Linux based OSs.


You know, Tracyanne, you might just have given me a reason to use Virtual Box at last......There are very rare occasions when Windows still is essential for what I have to do and I guess I shall just have to come out of my Luddite's cave and learn how to use the virtual machine method.....Currently, I use the trick of swapping over hdd's with a dedicated hdd purely for WinXP.......But a virtual machine sounds interesting and could be just as simple to use. I shall meditate on it......It certainly would be MUCH simpler for the business of looking at other Linux distributions.

Nice/interesting to see others share my impressions of the "Ken Hess technique".
skelband

Jun 28, 2011
6:29 PM EDT
@Ridcully:

On my newish Macbook Pro I have Windows XP, Windows Server 2008, and 2 Ubuntu 64-bit Machines all running on top of OSX with VirtualBox at the same time and they very rarely give me any trouble at all and with no appreciable lag.

Just make sure you have tons of memory (8GB here), and there is no problem.

I used to have Ubuntu 64-bit installed native running the other 3 VMs with VirtualBox, same story and faster I think and without the added aggro of OSX.
tracyanne

Jun 28, 2011
6:30 PM EDT
Quoting:Just make sure you have tons of memory (8GB here), and there is no problem.


What skelband said
Ridcully

Jun 28, 2011
6:38 PM EDT
@ Skelband and Tracyanne.......noted and thankyou. I'll be up in K'roy next Wednesday and will look into increasing this machine's memory....currently it's only a Gig, but that has always been more than adequate for anything I've done......Time to up the ante I think.
TxtEdMacs

Jun 28, 2011
6:45 PM EDT
Quoting: [...] People here don't like the author much? [...] and I assume that he's earned the disdain he receives. [...]


From this and other comments in your post I have to presume that there are covert flights to the moon or more prosaically you have been on an extended vacation with only the slowest dial up modems that are still functional. Whatever the case this author has had a number of his offerings recently predicting the Cloud is the future where there is no other option. Moreover, those that disagreed based upon security concerns were derided by said author. Indeed that person appeared on at least one of LXer's forums to try to beat back the opposition with his heroic stance, but little substantive counter argument.

So compliment him if you must, forgive his standard M.O., because of a statistical aberration he has produced something of substance. You will be surprised others have cited his good articles on these forums. However, one is known or should be by the major body of their work and by that criteria he may be validly found wanting.

As always,

YBT
jdixon

Jun 28, 2011
7:59 PM EDT
> ...and I assume that he's earned the disdain he receives...

That and more, though he is capable of writing good stuff. Just go to Daniweb and search for Ken Hess and you'll find more than enough examples.

> ...currently it's only a Gig, but that has always been more than adequate for anything I've done...

You'll want enough to run your current machine plus enough to run the virtual machine, plus a bit more just to be safe. If you're looking at running XP in the virtual machine, you'll probably want to allow another 1 GB for it. So I'd add 2 GB, just to be safe. If you're running a 32 bit version, there's not too much point in going over 3 GB anyway.
tracyanne

Jun 28, 2011
8:18 PM EDT
@Rid, it depends on what you are doing, I'm runnimg 4 Gig for the VM with Windows, and running Windows on the most efficient desktop graphics.. so called classic, no fancy stuff. But I'm running MS SQL Server, IIS, and a Full Visual Studio Development environment plus a a bunch of other high resource stuff. One thing I really apprciate was when VB enabled multiple Monitors in the VM, Windows really needs multiple Monitors in order for you to get decent work done.
skelband

Jun 28, 2011
9:00 PM EDT
@Ridcully:

Memory is cheap as chips now. If you look around a bit, you can get decent 8Gb for about $70 - 80
Koriel

Jun 28, 2011
10:59 PM EDT
@Ridcully Im currently running VMWare on Linux Mint XFCE with 2GB Ram and an ancient dual core 4.4GHz Athlon that doesnt even support hardware assisted virtualisation, a Windows XP guest image runs fine with about 726 MB assigned to it, just dont run to many memory hog apps at once and you should be ok.

Saying that you can't really beat more ram.
helios

Jun 28, 2011
11:25 PM EDT
Agreed on the three gigs Dr. I run XP SP3 in VB with 2 and 3D acceleration, and the full package of extensions (mostly drivers and usb support for third party stuff like phones). I split the RAM at roughly half with the larger fraction staying in the Linux camp.

Fact is, I am still in the stone age when it comes to phones. I use a blackberry 8330 curve and the software to synch isn't supported in Linux so my only real reason for having WinXP in VB is for my phone. I really only need a phone for two reasons...calling and email. This one does everything I need. Unfortunately, blackberry doesn't see the importance of writing a Linux version of their Desktop software.

Of course, tapping into my daughter's netflix account on occasion does happen.

Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]

Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!