May 8th, 2008
Sun xVM Virtualbox puts Mac on x86
The newest version of Sun’s xVM Virtualbox adds support for Apple’s OSX. (Mac ad satire from Jazebski.Pl in Poland.)
The new version is dubbed Version 2.6 and was released during last week’s CommunityDays event.
This is the first open source virtualization to support the Mac, and while the support is not yet complete (you can only run OSX as a host, not a guest) it could become a real competitor to VMWare and Xen.
There are two versions, community and proprietary. Both are available as free downloads, but the latter is only free for personal use. The proprietary version also includes USB support and a Remote Display Protocol (RDP) server.
This is the first release of the tool since Sun bought its maker, Innotek, in February.
As our own Gordon Haff noted then, xVM Virtualbox is a “Type 2″ hypervisor, running on top of another operating system, in the manner of Microsoft’s Virtual Server. This means more hardware overhead for the user.
And, of course, the whole idea here is that xVM Virtualbox provides an “on-ramp” for other Sun products, especially OpenSolaris, which can already run as a host in Version 2.6.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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