Desktop versions of VMware (VMware Workstation, VMware Fusion and VMware Player) can be run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. VMware is based in California, USA and was founded in 1998, although now it is owned by EMC Corporation. VMware is a virtualization software developed by VMware, Inc. Because, both Intel’s VT-x and AMD’s AMD-V hardware virtualization extensions are supported by VirtualBox, it can safely avoid few issues that arise when only software emulation is used. In addition, communication between two virtual machines is also possible with proper configuration in place. A common clipboard (among many other methods) is used for the communication between the host and the guest operating systems. Furthermore, each virtual machine can be independently configured to run with its own software/hardware emulation (if supported). VirtualBox provides the ability to start, pause, stop and resume any of the host operating systems it loads, without disturbing other virtual machines. It is considered the most popular virtualization software at the moment. It also allows restricted virtualization of Mac OS X on Apple hardware. VirtualBox supports Windows, Linux, BSD, OS/2, Solaris, etc as guest operating systems.

VirtualBox supports Linux, Mac OS X, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Solaris and OpenSolaris as the host operating system. Then, using the VirtualBox, many other operating systems (Guest OSs) can be loaded and run. VirtualBox is installed on top of the existing operating system (host systems).

Its original creator is innotek GmbH, which was bought by Sun Microsystems. It is released as a member of their family of virtualization products. VirtualBox (Oracle VM VirtualBox) is a virtualization package for x86, developed by Oracle corporation. Meanwhile, VMware and Parallels are the two major players in the Mac consumer virtualization (commercial) software market.

VirtualBox is the most popular VM software at the moment. VirtualBox, VMware and Parallels are three of the most popular platform VM software.

Most of such software allows having multiple machines on top of one physical platform. Platform Virtual Machines (VM) are being used very heavily because they provide the ability to emulate a complete physical computer machine on top of another.

Virtualbox vs vmware linux