[Discuss] Are there any no-cost vm's still out there?

[blu at nedharvey.com (Edward Ned Harvey (blu))]

> From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces+blu=nedharvey.com at blu.org] On
> Behalf Of Bill Horne
> 
> My question: does VMWare or Virtualbox still offer no-cost software for
> home/personal use? I'd like to run both Linux and Windows 7 (for all the
> usual reasons), but I don't know if I can do it without paying for a VM.
> TIA.

For a desktop, no-cost, you have:   Virtualbox on any platform.  VMWare Player on windows or linux.  
Since there's only one no-cost option on a mac, the question becomes - is it worthwhile to pay for Fusion or Parallels on the mac?  And I say yes if you use it on time that you're paid to be working.  No, if you're a student who just wants to do cool stuff for free.

For a server, I would recommend nothing other than VMWare ESXi.  Xen is crap, Virtualbox sucks for servers, I'll just mention MS in passing...  And what else is there?  Sure you could do something like KVM on a linux host, but why would you?  In that case, replace the linux host with ESXi on bare metal, and make the linux host actually a guest.