P4 ain't nothin'

Try an Intel Atom. AN INTEL ATOM!

people are so freaked out when I show them win7 running in a VM and then twirl the compiz cube around while it's going in seamless mode. especially on this tiny little thing.

VBox FTW!

Missing zVM in the mix :}

But then again, the s390 isn't that common an architecture.

Well, the z10s did largely replace them :)
Actually, I try to avoid pointing out to Unix people that they came about most of these technologies about 20 years late (though not always with success ;) ), and that Unix still has a lot to learn before it grows up to be a real multi-user OS :)

I have tried Virtualbox and it is not easy to use. VMware is also free and as always it is very easy to use. VMware is a lot more mature than Virtualbox. For people that are obvious, look for VMware Server. The great thing about VMware Server is its ability to serve virtual machines to other computers. Of course if they have the VMware console client which is mainly a GUI program that interfaces with VMware Server the user can setup one virtual machine and not have to copy the virtual machine to many computers. This makes VMware Server better than Virtualbox.

I use both, but I'm not sure which part of VirtualBox makes it hard to use? I'm curious, because the speed and ease of use are why I ended up switching my personal stuff to VirtualBox (though I still run GSX/ESX at work)

Virtualbox is not easy to setup because it requires its network to be setup by hand while VMware does not. If I want to setup either a network bridge or NAT in Virtualbox, the setup gets complicated. It requires the kernels virtual network modules to be compiled if it they are compiled. Also the understanding the methods to setup a virtual network that Virtualbox can identify. Using a physical network connection for Virtualbox also have the same problems. Using USB devices with Virtualbox is more complicated than VMware. Other issues that I had with Virtualbox is its reliability and stability is poor compared to a very, very mature program like VMware.

VMware Server (aka GSX) is easy to setup and easy to use. The speed of both VMware and Virtualbox is the same. The only difference is the stability and reliability which VMware has and Virtualbox does not.

Virtual Box......No way it is that one...the best one......

That's interesting - I've done probably 200 installs of PC-BSD and FreeBSD under Virtual Box (alpha/beta testing installers - gotta love it) without having a single network issue.

I also have Debian Lenny installed under Virtual Box, as well as Windows XP under Virtual Box. Virtual Box itself is under Windows XP in one case and under PC-BSD in the other cases.

Never a single VirtualBox related crash yet, so I guess I can't substantiate your anecdotes with my own lol :D

Sorry it's being a pain for you, though.
Now as for VMware being mature? That I can back up. Last year, I had 31 tickets open with RedHat, SAP, or Oracle related to VMware stability issues. Easy to tell - I just ran a report on my ticket queue :D

Biggest problem I had there was caused by Java or kernel settings on the clients, though.

Where is VServer??

i've been using it for years and still do as a default for any server i install.

VServer has been added.

--jeremy

I've been using VMware on windows servers to run linux distros. But if I'm running linux as the host OS, then I think Virtual Box is actually easier to set up. A tough vote, but I think I'm going to go with vmware this year.

What Virtual Box needs (or has, but I'm not aware of it yet?) is VMotion.

On the enterprise level, ESX server is just amazing when it comes to dealing with the throngs of little servers. Ignoring for a moment the architectural/political issues of this - being able to seamlessly migrate a bunch of little servers around on my server farm makes maintenance really easy. I recently upgraded memory on several of those boxes with no down-time noticed by the clients.

A solid win for me there :)

I use VirtualBox CSE (for the USB support)

This one is hard, I use VMWare and VirtualBox. I wish someone would take the best of both and make them into one. :)

-JJ

Virtual Box.
At college we had Virtual Box, VMWare and MS Virtual PC. Most all students used Virtual Box as it is easy to use and consistently worked for all Guest OS's tried.