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VirtualBox

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24.1K
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VMware Fusion

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VirtualBox vs VMware Fusion: What are the differences?

Developers describe VirtualBox as "Run nearly any operating system on a single machine and to freely switch between OS instances running simultaneously". VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. On the other hand, VMware Fusion is detailed as "Simple Virtual Machines for Mac". It gives Mac users the power to run Windows on Mac along with hundreds of other operating systems side by side with Mac applications, without rebooting. It is simple enough for home users and powerful enough for IT professionals, developers and businesses.

VirtualBox and VMware Fusion can be categorized as "Virtualization Platform" tools.

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Pros of VirtualBox
Pros of VMware Fusion
  • 358
    Free
  • 231
    Easy
  • 169
    Default for vagrant
  • 110
    Fast
  • 73
    Starts quickly
  • 45
    Open-source
  • 42
    Running in background
  • 41
    Simple, yet comprehensive
  • 27
    Default for boot2docker
  • 22
    Extensive customization
  • 3
    Free to use
  • 2
    Mouse integration
  • 2
    Easy tool
  • 2
    Cross-platform
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    What is VirtualBox?

    VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

    What is VMware Fusion?

    It gives Mac users the power to run Windows on Mac along with hundreds of other operating systems side by side with Mac applications, without rebooting. It is simple enough for home users and powerful enough for IT professionals, developers and businesses.

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    What companies use VirtualBox?
    What companies use VMware Fusion?
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    What tools integrate with VirtualBox?
    What tools integrate with VMware Fusion?

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    What are some alternatives to VirtualBox and VMware Fusion?
    Docker
    The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere
    KVM
    KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).
    Vagrant
    Vagrant provides the framework and configuration format to create and manage complete portable development environments. These development environments can live on your computer or in the cloud, and are portable between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.
    Hyper
    Hyper.sh is a secure container hosting service. What makes it different from AWS (Amazon Web Services) is that you don't start servers, but start docker images directly from Docker Hub or other registries.
    Qemu
    When used as a machine emulator, it can run OSes and programs made for one machine (e.g. an ARM board) on a different machine (e.g. your own PC). By using dynamic translation, it achieves very good performance. When used as a virtualizer, it achieves near native performance by executing the guest code directly on the host CPU. it supports virtualization when executing under the Xen hypervisor or using the KVM kernel module in Linux. When using KVM, it can virtualize x86, server and embedded PowerPC, 64-bit POWER, S390, 32-bit and 64-bit ARM, and MIPS guests.
    See all alternatives