VirtualBox vs VMware Player - In-Depth Comparison on Ubuntu 18.04

In response to a common question on the channel: which virtualization system do I prefer and which one is better? Well, as in-depth as I possibly can without taking 3 hours, here's some of the key takeaways as I compare VirtualBox and VMware Player on Ubuntu 18.04.

This video was sponsored by Skillshare.

#virtualbox #vmware #linux

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[Thanatos]

IMHO, on Linux hosts, qemu is a very good option. It is more of a pain to use without a front-end, but with any guest OS (I've used it for windows, *nix, and a certain OS that is definitely not produced or distributed by Apple), the performance is better than VMware or VirtualBox in my experience. It is also FOSS and has a ton of advanced features like PCIe pass through. It's well worth the slight learning curve to run; it is by far the most flexible and powerful free option on Linux.

[hermanstrom]

I only use Virtualbox on my iMac and my work Windows computer. On Linux I always use qemu/kvm/libvirt. I love the fact that I can customize my network settings as NAT'ed or bridged.

[Rood]

I'm glad you skipped QEMU in this short video. It has a slight learning curve, and needs a dedicated video. As another comment started, QEMU allows hardware pass through. It takes some knowledge to do this and sometimes specific hardware. But when you get it working, you'll wonder why you never used it before.

In the context of this video however; I'm disappointed you didn't cover simple things like USB support, virtual folders for sharing data between host and guest, etc...

[Floturcocantsee]

The video acceleration in VMware is much better than virtual box because it leverages your computers gpu. Virtualbox is mostly software based and is very slow for a software rasterizer as well.

[dalriada]

I was soured on using VMWare products when I bought Fusion for use on an iMac. It wasn't long before they released a new version that they wanted me to buy again after I upgraded to the then latest version of OSX. The grasping bastards might have issued a compatability update, but that wasn't what they chose to do. I'll stick to Virtualbox. I've also moved away from the Apple world for the same reason.

[RakeshD]

Thanks a lot for making this super simple to understand. I'll choose Vmware because of iits more vram support that I need for a specific task.

[Warflay]

I don't want to be nit picky, but QEMU is an emulator (as the name suggests) compared to vmware and vbox which are both virtualization software. The difference being, virtualization runs ony your real architecture, while emulation can fully emulate the system. I.e. when executing a vm all the environment is virtualized, but the instructions themselfs will run on your CPU. Thats the reason why you can't virtualize architectures that are different from your own (you will never be able to run an ARM-Linux on an x86 Host using VBox), and why you can't give a VM more CPU's than you physically have. This has the advantage that CPU wise it runs on near native performance (i.e. running a fully non graphical linux on vmware or vbox is crazy fast).
Emulation on the other hand emulates the whole system, including the CPU. If host and target architecture are the same, it can be reduced to virtualization (which I think QEMU does to increase performance if possible), but in case of QEMU you can basically create targets for any architecture you like. This way you can also emulate architectures like ARM. The main problem with this is that it can be slow (emulating ARM Android is a real pain, thats why all android emulators suck).


Both are useful, but these are two completely different things.

[shanedavenport]

On more bleeding edge distros you need to install 'dkms' . With 'dkms' installed the modules for VMware will automatically update to newer kernels.

[EricAdamsYT]

Life before virtualization could be painful for a serial distro hopper. I accidentally erased my share of partitions back in the day. Installers tended to much less forgiving than they are nowadays. Good comparison IG. Thanks for the video!

[rollmeister]

I recently tried Clear Linux on my Celeron based dell laptop, which is rather under powered. Running Windows 10 on it was a joke, nothing I did helped enough. Firefox was so snappy on Clear Linux, even though I do not think its built with the Intel Compiler because it is written in Rust. I had some hassles with mp4 video on the web though. Most Youtube videos played but I heard Chrome can be installed on Clear Linux and supports all the multimedia formats used on the web, so I might reinstall it. Fedora 30 is better than Win10 but noticeably slower than Clear Linux. XFCE was a bit lacking on Clear Linux with battery indicator missing for example., though faster than any Gnome desktop and it has three incarnations with the classic edition most responsive.

[CptMooney]

Theres plenty of frontends out there for qemu/kvm, which you totally should check out.
K(ernel) V(irtual) M(achine) can do AMAZING things, even outperforming bare metal in some tasks.
Wanna run a Windows VM with its own dedicated grafics card for gaming compatibility, or drive multiple
terminals off of one beefy system? KVM's got you covered.

And its FOSS ofc, as an integral part of Linux(by now). ;)

[erenyeagersasageyo]

69K subscribers ❤, now my day would go great 👍😊

[noenken]

10:18 Don't let Wendell from Level1Techs hear that. ;)

[rjramalho]

QEMU/KVM is faster almost always. Virtualbox and VMWare are just for personal use, and they aren't open source. I've used Virtualbox for almost 6 years, but its performance is not comparable to KVM. And KVM *is* a fully complete virtualization solution, unlike what you said on your video. Just my 0, 02€.

[gotchaxp]

KVM/QEMU rules :-)
You should compare Gnome Boxes and virt-manager ... Just kidding but QEMU is in my opinion the best option.

[donkey]

i get 1920x1080 working on virtualbox, not even using the terminal its just not an option.

[Xeno_Bardock]

I would like to see a video on Bedrock Linux which allows package managers freedom to an extent. You can use pacman and install packages from Arch repository on Ubuntu for example.

[ryans_life]

You are the man! Love Linux, especially now that it is great for gaming, hate creative support (adobe, capture one pro etc.) Never liked the native alternatives. Been wondering if I could run Linux for everything else; for photography software hop into VM. However, was only familiar with VB which with its shit graphics memory doesn't do anything. However, I have paused the video and pricked my ears up at 10:00 as it could be a game changer. Does anyone have experience running lightroom, capture one, photoshop, Affinity Photo etc. (please don't mention GIMP!) with VMware Player as I would love to migrate from Windows 10 and I could never get a stable rig to dual boot win 10 and Linux. Cheers for your time and support

[needsLITHIUM]

Qemu is usually pronounced "KEE-moo, " and does actually exist on Windows, BSD, and MacOS X.

[stephenjones]

VMWare isn’t open source so I’d never consider it when we have very good options that don’t use proprietary code.