💀 VIRTUALBOX IS DEAD!! VMware Workstation Pro is now free!!

There's absolutely zero reason to use VirtualBox, ever.

#virtualbox #vmware #virtualmachine

[eliaszoumas]

So in order to download Workstation Pro for personal use you have to create a Broadcom account and file a Trade Compliance Report giving your address and postal code. Not something you should expect from a hypervisor.

[magicianLogician]

the vmware store is down since 30 april of this year, so...

[RogerioMachadoM]

Last VMWARE Pro linux driver doesn't compile on kernel 2.8, tested on Fedora 40!! VirtualBox works!!!

[KenReynolds]

This is very welcome news! I loved VMWare back when it was free before and am excited to be able to use Workstation Pro now that it's free again for personal use.

[manosragiadakos]

last week I just added gpu passthrough to a VM on Qemu/KVM which you can not do with VMWare

[SUREILLBYTE]

Just got a VM setup on VirtualBox last night lol, excited to learn a new platform though

[ewenchan]

Three questions:
1) You mentioned that you can share a GPU between VMs with VMWare. Would you happen to have a tutorial on how to set that up?

I want to share one 3090 that I have between 4 VMs so that I will be able to play Halo Infinite on all 4 of the VMs, simultaneously.

From what you said, it sounded like VMWare can do this.

If you have a tutorial or a video on how to set this up that you can point me to, that would be greatly appreciated.

2) Broadcom only "graciously" allowed people to have the Workstation Pro for free after they announced that they were going to be pulling it, and the lashing that they got in response to that announcement was so bad, that this is why they're doing it.

They're not doing it out of the goodness of their own heart.

They're doing this because they got their butt handed to them by the community.

3) I still use Oracle VirtualBox because Oracle, thankfully, so far, hasn't pulled that kind of shenanigans like Broadcom did with VMWare.

THAT is one of the reason why I STILL use VirtualBox.

It certainly isn't as capable as VMWare in terms of the advanced stuff that you can do with VMWare, but if you just want to spin up a simple VM, VirtualBox is WAYYYY easier and faster to set up to get an Ubuntu VM up and running.

[LaserFur]

I am still going to have to move away from workstation pro since I can't do a subscription with air-gap security.

[kienhwengtai]

So VMWare Workstation is free ... FOR NOW but VirtualBox has always been free. You still need to register your details to download it, I just have happened to an account from work

[johnathanrhoades]

Hm. Got set up with Virtual box without issue and no bugs so far. But the next VM I set up I’ll look at VMware. I keep my dot files in a git repo so it’s not a huge deal if Virtual Box ends up sucking.

The network bit does sound really cool, though.

[bhcfzou]

I think you have two choice, standing by vmware but using esxi which as a non professionnal I never had the chance to tinker with but is baremetal or the second option in my opinion if you want to get a taste of how baremetal superpower is, you can give QEMU/KVM a chance on you linux machine, which is the fastest VM I have used on worstation (vmware uses too much resource and there is always this sense of getting everything ready for you which is not always a good idea if you want a unordinary project)and seen the possibility of configuration and performance, something close to the hardware is a greate choice. It's however famous for being hard to grasp but it virt manager as a front end if you want something quickly.

[wilfridtaylor]

Surprised you don't use Qemu if you are on Linux.

[gooniesfan]

If u use vmware they get all ur vm metadata and info about the vm u have when u create and start it. They share this info with Microsoft and law enforcement. Enough info to identify you even if you use VPNs on the vm instance.

[scottspa]

Not sure how you can badmouth virtualbox so much. Vbox (free) allows for snapshots, and subletting a virt network. VMware workstation has been so limited for so long.

[erlonpb]

I hate VB, it broke my ubuntu upgrade from 22.04 to 24.04

[solbu-]

I was qurious when I saw the video thumbnail, and after your very last comment that VirtualBox is not Free as in Libre I had to make a comment.
I am a Linux packager, which means I help create and maintain the distro packages people install using the package manager. A part of this task is to keep track of the various licenses a package uses. So I have a good background for commenting on licenses, and especially Virtualbox which I use every day on a Linux host system. I have Not run Windows in any capacity since january 2008.

VirtualBox is Free/Libre Software, also refered to by many as Open Source. It is under the GNU GPL version 3.
This is the very first statement on the virtualbox website.

And yes, VMware might be better at virtuallization than virtualbox. But virtualbox is not meant to be a VMware replacement. Virtualbox is meant to run on an existing desktop.
Those who run Linux and want a replacement for VMware runs Libvirt with QEMU or KVM.

[ytbr]

who is going to tell him about Hyper-V ?

[-Engineering-]

vbox is a pile of crap ! Uses too much my CPU and caused blue screen fatal error 1-2 times randomly

[cyrylthewolf]

Yeah... Too little, too late. Virtualbox is NOT dead - by the way. That you said that makes it clear that you have no clue what you're talking about.

[wznzgq]

where do i download it? the link on their website is dead for days