Sun grabs VirtualBox

I just ran into Steve Wilson, Sun's VP of xVM, in the cafeteria and heard the good news. Sun is acquiring innotek, a small company based in Germany that makes a very cool product called VirtualBox.

I had recently heard of VirtualBox on an internal mailing list, now I have no excuse not to download it for my Mac and run Ubuntu in it (I was going to use Fusion, but this makes more sense). I wonder if it will also let me load up the Fedora 8 disc I got at SCALE?

Here are some basics:

innotek VirtualBox is a family of x86 virtualization products for enterprise as well as home use.
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts
It has a very extensive list of supported guest OS's [including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD]
VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company [which will now be Sun ;)]
You can find sources, binaries, documentation and other resources for VirtualBox on this site.
It is freely available as Free Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).
You can download it here.

For more info on this deal, you can check out the press release as well as Steve's blog and Tim Marsland's (our software CTO).

Looks like we're on a roll, I can't wait to see what Free software company we might acquire next. :)

Pau for now...

Posted on: Feb 12, 2008

Posted by: barton808

Category: FOSS

Permanent link to this entry

Comments:

Great Move Sun!

With Sun "VirtualBox" you CAN run Fedora 8 and many, many more OS's.
You can download FUNCTIONAL VDIs, if you would like from my site.
http://veeDee-Eyes.com

Posted by veeDee-Eyes on February 19, 2008 at 11:01 AM CST #

Damn it, first MySQL and now VirtualBox? Another Open Source project that will now hit the shitter. No, I'm not a Sun software fan. Hardware is great but they should've left it at that.

Posted by Simon Pedersen on March 14, 2008 at 07:43 PM CDT #

Simon,

We'll have to see how the integration of the two companies turns out but I have a feeling that given the cultural and strategic alignment between Sun and the companies these will be successful acquisitions and that they will continue to thrive as Free and Open Source projects and even grow in strength.

I've got my fingers crossed :)

Posted by Barton on March 17, 2008 at 11:11 AM CDT #

I'm not a Sun fan. In all truth, Sun's extortionist practices make Microsoft look like the Mother Theresa. This is far from progress... this is a step backwards.

Posted by Jon on May 27, 2008 at 11:56 AM CDT #

I really liked VirtualBox. It installed Ubuntu 804 on my Windows XP laptop and on my Windows Vista work PC with no problems. Sound even works. I had nothing but misery attempting to load Ubuntu 804 in MS Virtual PC - so "good on ya!" Sun!

Posted by Brian Jester on June 01, 2008 at 01:21 AM CDT #

Jon,

sorry you feel that way.

Posted by Barton George on June 03, 2008 at 09:17 AM CDT #

Brian,

Good to hear!

Posted by Barton George on June 03, 2008 at 09:18 AM CDT #

The VirtualBox is a great thing.
One question from my site.
Is it possible to run VirtualBox without Admin-rights; under a normal User - Accout?

Thanks, and go ahead with the VirtualBox.

Martin

Posted by Martin Mattusch on June 11, 2008 at 03:17 AM CDT #

In common with most apps, VirtualBox needs to be installed by someone with Admin rights, but afterwards can be run by mere mortals (regular users).

One thing to ensure is that the user has access to /dev/vboxdrv and other devices that vbox uses (such as USB). Hence, the use of the vboxusers group.

-FB

Posted by The Fat Bloke on June 11, 2008 at 08:55 AM CDT #

Sun may have great products but they have stuffed up this one royally.
Unaware of Innotek's acquisition, I did the usual apt-get upgrade on the box that runs the VM and all I got was a "403 - access denied"?!?
Quick googling provided the answer to why!
Now, I don't believe that Sun will provide and maintain repositories for the legions of apt users worldwide.
What a stuff up and I thought Microsoft had the monopoly on stuffups!!!

Posted by Jean on June 14, 2008 at 07:27 PM CDT #

Sun are looking to fix this.
Watch that space ;-)

-FB

Posted by The Fat Bloke on June 23, 2008 at 11:34 AM CDT #

Did the license change? Seems to me it has, but perhaps I missing something.

I thought prior to Sun's acquisition, you could freely distribute VirtualBox (unmodified and not selling it). Now it seems you can't do that.

That sucks.

Posted by Mark on July 14, 2008 at 10:31 PM CDT #

No. The PUEL is almost identical to the innotek version.
Sun was very careful not to break things.

-FB

Posted by Fat Bloke on July 15, 2008 at 11:42 AM CDT #

Oh dear, it seems as though I'm not alone finding VirtualBox 'less than friendly' (to put it mildly). I'd really like it to work for me, as I've seen it running fine within my Linux Users Group ... Not for 'newbies' though ... or so it seems - Pity

:( Chris.

Posted by Chris on August 29, 2008 at 07:50 PM CDT #

Tried to install it the other day on an ubuntu 8.04 system. Didn't work properly. Tried to uninstall it, it messed up all my network drivers. Now i cant even connect it to a wired LAN to fix the problems. Was using it for a college project... needless to say project is F%$*ed! Sticking to vmware products in future.

*USUALLY a big SUN fan. ;-(

Posted by James on October 29, 2008 at 01:09 PM CDT #

I'm no SUN fanboy--in fact I have never used a SUN computer in my life. Nonetheless, I am surprised by the negative comments many in the GNU/Linux community make about SUN. Some of the comments above are really unfair and uncalled for. In my humble opinion SUN has done quite a lot to advance FLOSS (free/libre/open source software) in the world. Open sourcing StarOffice as OpenOffice back in 2000 was the greatest gift that GNU/Linux has ever received and I for one am damn grateful. Before the advent of OpenOffice GNU/Linux was fun for computer nerds, but it simply wasn't useful for most people. OpenOffice was the killer application which changed everything and made GNU/Linux a viable alternative. Maybe AbiWord and Gnumeric would have eventually evolved enough to fill the shoes of MS Word and Excel, but we would have waited years.

SUN hasn't always played nicely with the FLOSS world in the past, but since the open sourcing of Java and OpenSolaris and the acquisition of MySQL and Innotek, SUN has displayed a real commitment to FLOSS. I wish that SUN had used the GPL for OpenSolaris so there could be more collaboration with GNU/Linux rather than a silo effect, but SUN has gained enormous credibility with these moves in my eyes. I am a committed user of Debian GNU/Linux for political reasons who would never consider switching to OpenSolaris, but I wish SUN great success and sincerely hope that people in the FLOSS world will stop bashing SUN and treating it like a pariah. Barton, keep up the good work at SUN.

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