Why I don’t use VirtualBox

This article is really nothing more than me pointing at a link to my own article about virtualisation on a Mac. Benjamin Thomas has written his own article about virtualised Linux development using VirtualBox. His article covers all same details as mine, but with specific regard to VirtualBox, so I suggest you read that if you’re after VirtualBox information.

However, I had some issues with VirtualBox that I thought were worth outlining:

VirtualBox file sharing doesn’t support symbolic or hard links, which also means that my much–used virtualenv doesn’t work correctly. This is a deal breaker for me, basically;
Networking from host to guest can be a pain, as evidenced by Stuart Colville’s post regarding host–only network adapters;
Somewhat subjectively, I don’t much like VirtualBox from an interface perspective, and as VMWare seems like a pretty smart company (see their recent Redis talent acquisition as proof) I’m happy to continue supporting them.

Incidentally, I discovered Benjamin’s post through my own ego–tastic Google Alerts.

Bradley Wright