The narrower system requirements, need for support contracts and advanced features will feel more at home in a professional IT environment.īut unlike Parallels, VMware is cross-platform, and it has more features and is more responsive than the free alternatives. Is it worth it? While VMware offers a Personal Use License for free, which is more favorable for home users compared to Parallels Desktop, its closest competitor, in many ways it’s less suitable for a normal home or business user. So, for example, you can install Windows on your Mac to have access to any Windows apps you rely on. Windows and Linux tools like VirtualBox and VMware Player tend to be targeted to a geekier audience.VMWare Fusion allows you to install additional operating systems on your Mac, Windows, or Linux computer. While VirtualBox works very well on Windows and Linux, Mac users may want to buy a more polished, integrated Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion program. Both Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion for Mac are more polished than the virtual machine programs on other platforms, since they’re marketed to average Mac users who might want to run Windows software. Parallels Desktop: (Mac OS X): Macs also have Parallels Desktop available.VMware Fusion: (Mac OS X): Mac users must buy VMware Fusion to use a VMware product, since the free VMware Player isn’t available on a Mac.We recommend starting out with VirtualBox, but if it doesn’t work properly you may want to try VMware Player. More advanced features-many of which are found in VirtualBox for free-require upgrading to the paid VMware Workstation program. You can use VMware Player on Windows or Linux as a free, basic virtual machine tool. VMware Player: (Windows, Linux): VMware has their own line of virtual machine programs.VirtualBox works very well, particularly on Windows and Linux where there’s less competition, making it a good place to start with VMs. There’s no paid version of VirtualBox, so you don’t have to deal with the usual “upgrade to get more features” upsells and nags. VirtualBox: (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X): VirtualBox is very popular because it’s open-source and completely free.There are several different virtual machine programs you can choose from: If you still need Windows XP for older apps, you could run it in a VM where at least the harm of running an old, unsupported OS is mitigated. Sandboxing also allows you to run insecure OSes more safely. RELATED: Tell Your Relatives: No, Microsoft Won't Call You About Your Computer This makes VMs a safe place to test apps-or websites-you don’t trust and see what they do.įor example, when the “Hi, we’re from Windows” scammers came calling, we ran their software in a VM to see what they would actually do-the VM prevented the scammers from accessing our computer’s real operating system and files. Software inside a VM can’t escape the VM to tamper with the rest of your system. RELATED: Sandboxes Explained: How They're Already Protecting You and How to Sandbox Any ProgramĪnother advantage VMs provide is that they are “ sandboxed” from the rest of your system. If you want to run a later version of Windows-like Windows 10-but have older apps that only run on XP, you could install Windows XP into a VM. For example, as a Linux or Mac user, you could install Windows in a VM to run Windows apps you might not otherwise have access to. VMs also provide a way to run another OS’ software. When you’re done playing with an OS, you can just delete the VM. For example, they are a great way to mess around with Linux-or a new Linux distribution-and see if it feels right for you. They allow you to experiment with another OS without having to install it on your physical hardware. Why You’d Want to Create a Virtual MachineĪside from being good geeky fun to play around with, VMs offer a number of serious uses.
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