VirtualBox 1.5: the good, the bad, and the ugly
The new VirtualBox brings seamless virtualization to Linux. This puts Linux on par with the Mac - users can run their native desktop but still launch the odd Windows-only program when they need to. The VirtualBox manual doesn’t give much detail on the new feature, so here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly of VirtualBox 1.5
Previously on VentureCake we’ve discussed using RDesktop’s seamless RDP to launch apps from a VM, but VirtualBox 1.5 makes the process a lot simpler:
- Install VirrtualBox. Ubuntu 7.10 users can simply install the virtualbox package
- Click Applications → System Tools → Innotek VirtualBox
- Make a VM, pop in a Windows CD and install.
- Windows, click Devices → Install Guest Additions, click Allow lots, and let Windows reboot.
That’s all. So how does it work?
The good
- Seamless virtualization just works (with one caveat - see below). Hit Ctrl L to launch seamless mode. The Windows desktop is replaced by the Windows taskbar sitting above the GNOME panel.
- Virtualbox has two windows - one with the VM controls (start, stop, edit settings, etc), and one with the VM itself. The control window can be closed with the VM still running, so you just have the Windows taskbar without any config tools shown. It’s simple and works well.
- Virtualbox provides packages for an insane amount of distros. You can update VirtualBox at the same time as all your other apps via their APT repositories. Something VMware (who still provide Workstation in RPM format only) could learn from.
The bad
- The VirtualBox manual doesn’t mention this, but seamless virtualization requires desktop effects (GNOME’s desktop effects, Compiz Fusion, etc) to be be disabled. Otherwise minimizing windows apps will leave bits of the Windows desktop around. Since more Linux distribution will be turning this on by default, this needs to be fixed. In Ubuntu 7.04, click System Preferences → Desktop Effects. Compositing is an increasingly important part of the Linux desktop in 2007, and something many distributions are turning on by default - this needs to be fixed.
- Windows apps show up on the Windows taskbar only, not the Gnome taskbar. More integration would be nice.
- We’ve had major probs with VirtualBox 1.5 networking. The manual mentions that in the default NAT mode ‘the virtual machine receives its network address and configuration on the private network from a DHCP server integrated into VirtualBox‘. But the VM doesn’t get a response via DHCP, there’s no dhcp process running on the host, and we can’t find any files relating to dhcp installed by the virtualbox package. The problems may be caused by upgrading from a previous Virtualbox release, but really, this shouldn’t be hard. Here it’s VirtualBox that could learn from VMware, who makes NAT networking a snap.
Update: As suspected, creating a new VM from scratched fixed the networking issue. - There are no packages for the VirtualBox Open Source edition, and, oddly, it’s hard to find info about licensing the regular version for more than personal use. Hey VirtualBox, we’re happy to pay for business use - tell us where to send our money!
The Ugly
VirtualBox looks a little 1995. It’s a bit Gangsta’s Paradise, a bit Batman Forever, a bit, well, naff looking. If they can’t use GTK themes like every other app, they should at least make it prettier.
Overall
VMware server is more polished and has easier networking, but once your VM is up and working, seamlessness is an essential feature that makes VirtualBox the better platform for running that odd Windows app.
Now where’s a simple, good looking Xen GUI?
Update 1: We mentioned that VirtualBox looks like a Windows 95 app. This is because Virtualbox looks like a Windows 95 app. It doesn’t use GTK themes, nor does it use any current KDE theme. It looks, in fact, like a Windows 95 app. Stating that does does not mean we hate QT, KDE, C++, kittens or babies, and if you think it does, you are completely insane.
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September 8th, 2007 23:20
This looks much more promising than the solution with seamlessRDP. However I disagree on the ‘bad’ point about showing apps only in the Windows taskbar. I think this is the correct behavior and I prefer it. After all when you open 15 tabs in Firefox, you don’t want 15 entries in the taskbar, despite Jeff’s thoughts.
A few question though:
- what about color depth? seamless RDP managed only 16Bit. Does VirtualBox support 24Bit?
- can you distribute the Windows taskbar across multiple desktops?
- or: can you make visible it only on one desktop.
September 9th, 2007 00:32
Hi Nikola,
I see your point - perhaps it’s best to let the user pick whether apps appear on the Windows taskbar or on the task list. Ideally I’d like to be able to launch Windows apps directly from my Applications menu, like Crossover allows. Or at least I think that’s be nice for new Linux users: I don’t actually use Windows apps right now.
Color is 32 bit.
You can’t stretch the windows taskbar across multiple desktops, but you can make it visible only on a particular desktop. Behind the scenes, your Windows apps and taskbar are a single non-rectangular X window (you can see this if you take a screenshot).
September 9th, 2007 02:53
It isn’t too hard to get seamless integration with vmware server either. You can set any particular vm to run automatically via a shell script, and as you posted before (which was great) you can disable the desktop in the vm, install seamless rdp, then remote into it. Once I got it set up, I just aliased a command to start the windows vm, then another to remote into it. Easy!
September 9th, 2007 05:46
Are there more of this kind of applications for Linux? I am looking for a good way to run Visual Studio 2005/2008 under Linux and this seems to be the way.
September 9th, 2007 05:50
I’m not sure what you mean about “1995″. I think the interface looks great. It’s not a very good argument to say “If they can’t use GTK themes like every other app, they should at least make it prettier.” about a qt-based app. “Every other app” is NOT gtk-based.
Ed: You haven’t said why it isn’t a fine argument. Every other app DOES use GTK themes - Firefox, Evolution, VMware, Miro, Adobe Reader, Evince, Azureus, Deluge, every Java and Mono app. GNOME is the default desktop in every major distro - ie, Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuSE. The only major QT apps are Amarok and Opera.
It simply doesn’t make sense to create a new app in QT. Even if one does, you don’t need to stick with the default Windows 95 look - Amarok and Opera don’t look like crap, why should VirtualBox?
Toolkits are irrelevant to end users, and if an app can’t be consistent with a users desktop, then it should at least look good.
September 9th, 2007 05:50
This is only for a Virtual box setup correct? you can’t do a mac boot camp parallels setup can you? where macs allow a boot camp partition so you can dual boot and then if you are in OSX you can virtualize that Windows partition. virtual box does not have anything like this does it?
September 9th, 2007 06:41
Now if they could just have Opengl passthru support, that would be awesome (maybe even d3d support!)
September 9th, 2007 06:52
Virtualbox won’t use your GTK theme because it’s simply not a GTK application. From what I can see on my system VirtualBox is using the Qt toolit - and it’s looking very good here. I assume that you don’t have a Qt theme set, or one that’s not to your liking. You can hardly blame VirtualBox for that
If you must, blame your distribution because it didn’t set a QT theme matching your GTK theme.
September 9th, 2007 07:21
One thing I hated about Parallels for Mac was the fact that it displayed the windows taskbar… VMWare Fusion on the other hand does not and integrates perfectly with the MacOS launcher bar.
VirtualBox show provide a simular feature to get rid of the windows bar and use the gnome/kde bar instead.
September 9th, 2007 07:43
“VirtualBox looks a little 1995. It’s a bit Gangsta’s Paradise, a bit Batman Forever, a bit, well, naff looking. If they can’t use GTK themes like every other app, they should at least make it prettier.”
Mine looks and feels like any KDE app (which is nevertheless strange since it’s a Qt app) after installing from innotek’s repo under Ubuntu Feisty (GNOME). Try installing qt4-qtconfig and playing around with qtconfig to give Qt-based apps (like VirtualBox and SMPlayer) a better look.
September 9th, 2007 08:14
I just installed XP on a vm for the first time yesterday on 7.04 ubuntu, works perfectly except for limited graphics support. I use it for video editing and Autodesk Inventor Pro CAD, and it works utterly flawlessly apart from the DirectX issue.
It works perfectly with Compiz Fusion running, which makes me question this a bit…
September 9th, 2007 08:15
Oh and also my NAT networking runs absolutely flawlessly first time. I didn’t even know it was working O_o
Ed: Thanks Jenra. Do you have a dhcpd process running on your host machine? What package provided this? rpm -qf filename, or dpkg -S filename will tell you.
September 9th, 2007 08:24
Virtualbox 1.4 uses my gtk+ theme just fine…I couldn’t see why that wouldn’t be the case with 1.5
September 9th, 2007 09:01
well… even if it is a little rough around the edges compare to parallels, i say kudos!. i have been waiting patiently for this and am thrilled that it is starting. even if it isnt 2.0 yet, i know that testing is very important. use it. test it. show the bugs. cant wait for it to be beryl compatible. beryl ROCKS!
September 9th, 2007 09:08
About the “It’s ugly” comment:
Virtualbox is based on Qt rather than Gtk. So it will look ugly in a regular GNOME/XFCE environment, but will fit right into a Qt environment.
VMWare is based on Gtk (1-series, I believe), so it looks horrendous under KDE.
My suggestion is to just install a pretty Qt theme.
September 9th, 2007 10:10
As many have already pointed out - the ‘ugly’ comments are misleading. The ugliness is subjective and also because you dont have a good QT theme.
I also think this article gives a misleading impression to people not familiar with Linux that Gnome is the dominant desktop environment (esp in your reply to BHSPitMonkey) and I cant understand your comment that ‘It simply doesn’t make sense to create a new app in QT’.
I myself prefer gnome, but I can assure you that KDE is alive and kicking.
Ed: As already pointed put, I don’t have a good QT theme but Opera looks fine. If VirtualBox needs to include something extra to not look like a Windows 95 app, then they should include it.
Out of the 3 major distros, exactly 3 use GNOME by default. What makes you think that’s not dominant?
September 9th, 2007 10:30
Oh and the only incompatibility I’ve experienced so far regarding Compiz Fusion is a bunch of window trails that stick to a black background, which (the whole mess) fortunately shows up only when nothing’s open/visible (windows, tooltips, menus).
September 9th, 2007 11:59
I would like to see this mode take the extra step and allow seamless integration with the Gnome (or KDE) desktop. (Kind of like WINE does it) I would like to see a “Windows Programs” group in the main menu of Gnome, and the apps that are running could be in the Gnome task bar. I don’t want to hit CTRL L to get to this mode, but have it as an automatically enabled preference when I run this virtual machine, if that is what I told it to do when I set up this VM the first time. This way, I would not have to ever know that MS Windows was running… Of course, if this is not what you wanted, you would not have to enable this feature. (It could be toggled in the VM preferences) I would call it something like “Invisible Mode.”
Just an idea…
September 9th, 2007 13:41
Compositing, increasingly important? Oh, please. Other than OSX-alike docks that won’t work without compositing, there is NOTHING IMPORTANT about compositing! Drop shadows and other gee-whiz fx are CANDY.
Having said that, yes, the average kiddie will expect for Windows apps to just work with the compositor.
Ed: If you enjoy waiting while what’s beneath each window is loaded into your video memory, you’ll love your uncomposited desktop. I’ll be using my responsive user interface while you marvel at the miracle of your caps lock key.
September 9th, 2007 13:46
Mike, you honestly believe that because three major distributions choose GNOME by default that it’s either Troll Tech or KDE’s responsibility to provide seamless GTK+ integration??? I’m confused, I thought KDE was the older, and until very recently, more dominant desktop.
We’ll see if GNOME continues to be dominant. It’s a great desktop, but the unsurprising and predictable cycle is getting more and more unsurprising and predictable, if you know what I mean.
KDE already has a gtk-qt theme, which allows users to use their KDE theme with GTK+. If the KDE camp could do that, then surely the GNOME camp could do the opposite.
Personally I use QtCurve. Sure, it requires you to set your color and widget settings in KDE’s control panels, but since I’m currently using KDE, that’s fine. And I’ve used QtCurve when GNOME and XFCE have been my primary desktops, so there.
And that’s as good a place as any to end the OT theme rant.
Thanks for the review; I wasn’t aware of VirtualBox until today. I may just have a use for that.
Ed:No, I don’t believe it’s Trolltech or KDE’s responsibility to make VirtualBox look pleasant. You wrote that, and if you are suggesting that I did, you are a liar. Please go away. Cheers.
September 9th, 2007 15:50
It is running two separate OS’s at the same time.
Linux (the host) running, while virtual box is displaying explorer.exe from the guest. How are the windows apps going to talk to a linux task pane/bar and vice versa.
Even though it is “seamless”, it is still two SEPARATE OS’s running
Ed:You’re right. This is clearly impossible. These are two seperate OSs, and separate OSs cannot communicate with each other. Parallels does not exist, and if it does, it certainly doesn’t allow Windows apps to be launched from OSX. I bow down before you and your caps lock.
September 9th, 2007 18:03
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Ed: You haven’t said why it isn’t a fine argument. Every other app DOES use GTK themes - Firefox, Evolution, VMware, Miro, Adobe Reader, Evince, Azureus, Deluge, every Java and Mono app. GNOME is the default desktop in every major distro - ie, Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSuSE. The only major QT apps are Amarok and Opera.
It simply doesn’t make sense to create a new app in QT. Even if one does, you don’t need to stick with the default Windows 95 look - Amarok and Opera don’t look like crap, why should VirtualBox?
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What a pity to see an “editor” with such a lack of objectivity.
You’re sooo trying to convince people that Gnome is sooo much better that you fail to see the contradictions in your own statements.
Gnome may indeed be the default in those 3 “major” distros you cited, but as far as i know there are a lot of popular distros that come with Kde as default (Slackware anyone…) & the 3 you talk about also provide Kde if the user wishes to. That hardly makes QT apps irrelevant as you suggest, does it?
Let’s not talk about several ‘major’ FOSS developers praising KDE a few months ago.
You’re whole point by the way is moot as the main reason the big distros come with a default desktop is so one only needs one cd to do a basic install.
You know only 2 apps based on QT that are worth it … why doesn’t that surprise me?
Try to set over you’re Gnome radicalism and admit that Kde & other desktop environments have their usefulness, their community and have brought many positive things to the free software world.
Ed: I didn’t day anything about GNOME being better - only you did. I merely said it is dominant. To which you have responded that Slackware uses KDE. I respond in turn with a caution about the dangers of recreational drug use.
September 9th, 2007 22:38
For me a new and cool app that does NOT use Gtk sounds like a breeze, and Qt is a eal joy to develop with.
if Gnome will become a true monopoly in the Linux desktop (and despite what somebody thinks it’s still not true) Linux will become of totally no interest to me.
September 10th, 2007 03:20
1. I see some bias towards GTK+ here
2. VirtualBOX uses Trolltech’s Qt toolkit for a good reason
3. VirtualBOX is great!
September 10th, 2007 08:27
“Out of the 3 major distros, exactly 3 use GNOME by default. What makes you think that’s not dominant?”
Huh? have you checked distrowatch lately??
pcLinuxOS, Sabayon, Mepis all use KDE by default….
It’s been awhile since I installed debian but as I recall it asks you during the install which one you would like to have as default.
But your argument makes a bad assumption, the watch word is “default”. great thing about Linux is that you are free to choose your desktop and to switch as often as you login. What you need to find are stats about what people actually use.
Ed: Distrowatch is biased. Check Google trends. My argument does not assume that users will not change from the default desktop. My argument is that VirtualBox should simply look nice (and not like a Windows 95 app) when used on the default desktop.
September 10th, 2007 09:22
KDE can look darned ugly if the fonts are not configured properly, is that what you are talking about??? Have you looked at their screenshots? they look fine to me.
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Screenshots
Or are you actually complaining that it doesn’t look like Gnome???
Personally I have a strong dislike for the Gnome way of doing things. That’s why it is great to have so many choices of desktops, everybody can pick the one that works for them.
Ed: I’d prefer VirtualBox to use my desktop’s theme, but if not, I’d just like it to look good - which the Windows 95 look certainly does not.
September 10th, 2007 10:28
I wonder would it be possible to run autohotkey somehow?
September 10th, 2007 12:50
Virtualbox 1.5 has a very nice stylish interface under XP, sorta MacOSX like with the whole bubbly effect happening.
September 10th, 2007 16:06
I do not have Desktop Effects enabled and seamless virtualization works just fine.
September 10th, 2007 18:22
Ed,
Could you please tone down a bit on Qt/KDE? From a programmers perspective Qt is absolutely fantastic. Important Qt apps include Google Earth, Skype, Photoshop elements, KOffice, etc etc etc. These days even OpenOffice.org includes a Qt implementation. On mobile devices Qt also has much better representation than GTK.
KDE distro’s include most live cd’s like Knoppix, Kanotix and Mepis. Further you of course have Kubuntu, Mandriva and other distributions. Many companies and governments also chose for KDE above Gnome in combination with other distro’s, most of which have official KDE packages.
I understand that you have never touched C++ and want to support the only Desktop distribution you use (Gnome is of course a fine piece of software), but come on, you can’t expect us to take you serious this way…
Ed: I don’t have anything against QT, KDE, or C++ and I never made any mention of them in my article. I’m happily using Skype right now. While I’d prefer Skype use the same theme as my other apps (which is possible if the Skype developers felt like doing it), I don’t really notice too much, as Skype still looks good. Virtualbox, on the other hand, does not look good: it looks like a Windows 95 app. This seems to have gone over a lot of people’s heads. This is not about KDE people!
September 10th, 2007 21:22
Does it run on yellowdog linux, aka, ps3?
Ed: Nope Michael, Windows these days is for x86, x86-64 and Itanium only. The PS3 has a PPC Cell CPU.
September 11th, 2007 07:23
>
I notice that ‘puppies’ is ominously absent!
September 11th, 2007 10:39
Thanks for the heads up on this.. I saw your little article on digg while I was at work the other day. Just got everything working. I love it!
Now… If I could only get GR Level 3 to work under XP on Virtual Box.
-A
September 11th, 2007 10:49
Does VirtualBox allow booting an already installed windows like it is possible with VMware (as you described in a previous article)?
September 11th, 2007 16:53
This is sweet, and it might come in handy. I have just installed a server running Ubuntu (though I would have preferred Debian instead). Nonetheless, I require some Windows to run, so this is perfect.
September 12th, 2007 04:25
…It doesn’t look like a Windows 95 app; at least, stop stating it over and over as if people don’t have different opinions. I *like* how it looks, and a lot of people agree with me.
I’m also not sure why your Virtualbox window is so blocky, but mine has rounded corners on the tabs, the scrollbar looks different, and the “shadows” aren’t as deep. Also, I think when I changed the color scheme to make orange the color of selected items, Virtualbox followed suit (not only that, but my scrollbar is orange, too :D). So it actually looks a lot better than your screenshot.
Ed: Yes, you’re completely right:
September 13th, 2007 04:14
how good does a control panel need to look anyway? use for few minutes to setup and then close when a vm is running?
it what the program does that important not it gui that is used to configure.
September 13th, 2007 07:36
About the taskbar. I would like to have some form of an integrated taskbar. I am not really an OS programmer, but it would seem that there should be some object in the Windows OS which knows what items are currently on the taskbar. This information could be retrieved by an application running on the windows guest account, and that application could use the network connection between guest and host to communicate which programs are on the tray, and which has focus, what order they are displayed. Then the program could add links to the taskbar equivalent in Linux.
It would also seem to me that the easiest thing to do would be to run the windows vm fullscreen on one of the virtual desktops and just use the rest for linux, unless you need to have both a linux and windows application sitting right next to each other…. Install a different vm on each side of the cube?
I am interested in moving to Linux, but I need strong windows support. I don’t think I need one sitting ontop of the other, so would I be better off just running the windows vm and setting up a share and mounting it in linux for the windows files?
Thanks.
September 14th, 2007 00:32
I have tried to click “Devices → Install Guest Additions” but nothing happens. Certainly I am not asked to click Allow.
I also cannot get NAT to work. Is there a bridged mode? This is on a laptop with only one wired interface, and I tried to select the Host interface rather than NAT, but that generates an error as soon as I select to Start the VM. Does networking have to be working before I can install the Guest Additions?
September 14th, 2007 13:26
I was able to get Virtual Box seamless mode working with compiz-fusion by always keeping a window open in windows - I use Google floating bar. It keeps the Vm from bringing back up the desktop and other weird composite issues.
I’ve used vmware products for a long time, but virtualbox, although a bit buggy is light, fast, and flexible.
September 25th, 2007 00:46
i think it is amazing. too bad about beryl integration though. that is really, really annoying, but hey… other than that, it is awesome!
October 30th, 2007 01:44
Ok, I read a post from Jenra who’s running Autodesk Inventor Pro CAD, and it works “utterly flawlessly apart from the DirectX issue”. What does that mean? My daughter is in a High School industrial design class that requires her to use AutoCAD Inventor on a PC, since we are Mac ONLY (I’d like to keep it that way) is there any value to looking at running Autodesk Inventor with VMware Fusion on an Intel machine?
April 21st, 2008 07:10
Do you have to install windows to run Virtual Box? I already have XP installed do I need to re install it?