Alternatives to VirtualBox?

Is there any software out there that operates on the same principle as VirtualBox?

http://www.vmware.com/products/workstation
I messed around with this back when version 6 was out—maybe 6 or 7 years ago, if I recall—and it worked right out of the box. Pretty straightforward, logical stuff. Tried giving VirtualBox a shot about six months back, but it just didn't click for me... felt way too clunky.

Thanks for the help. It’s not really the complexity that's getting to me; it's just that my processor doesn't seem to support virtualization, which means I can't get VirtualBox running. I honestly can't wrap my head around how I managed to make it work before using this exact same CPU. 🙂 Anyway, thanks again.

So, what kind of rig are you running?

I’m on a laptop, and I actually had to dive into the BIOS to toggle virtualization just to get my 64-bit OS to play nice.
The 32-bit OS worked fine in a VM without any hassle.
I was spinning up Linux on Windows 7 64

I’ve been using VMware Player since it’s free, and honestly, some stuff just runs smoother there, while other things work better in VirtualBox.

I can't enable virtualization in the BIOS because my processor doesn't support it, so the option isn't even there.

So, what kind of processor are you rocking?

VMware Player is free. Period.

VirtualBox is running fine on my Intel i5 laptop, and it works just as smooth on my AMD Athlon II X4 640 desktop too.
Both are 64-bit.

I really hope you've got enough RAM to handle running a VM.

Hope you've got enough RAM to actually run a VM without it crawling

So, how much RAM are we talking about for this to actually run smoothly?

Andrew Murphy5 said:How much RAM are we talking about here to actually run this thing smoothly?

Look, you need enough for your main OS plus whatever you decide to hand over to the VM, depending on what kind of heavy lifting you're doing inside it.

nimblecobra5 said:Is there any software out there that functions similarly to VirtualBox?

VMware offers a comparable alternative called VMware Player, which is actually free for personal use. In the more recent versions, you can even set up a virtual machine using this tool without needing to purchase Workstation.

You can download it here, and I've included some instructions here.

Windows 8 and Hyper-V Manager 😁