Windows on Mac, and Linux on Mac with VirtualBox

You can do virtually anything on a Mac that you can do with a PC, Office Suites, Photoshop, Programming, Itunes, etc… But every once and a while there is something that comes up that requires a machine running Windows, or possibly even Linux.  And for those infrequent occurrences you can keep a separate computer lying around to use for those random purposes, or you could run some Computer Virtualization Software, so you can run windows on mac and linux on mac.

Virtualization has been around for a while and has really driven the quest for putting more and more cores in a single CPU so you could run windows on mac, or even linux on windows. There are many options available to get you started in the virtualization world. You could use VMware Fusion, or Parallels to get the job done, or you could use Virtualbox. Virtualbox is the lesser known Virtualization software originally released by Sun, now maintained by Oracle, that is Open Source and completely FREE.

Now there are a couple of features that the paid options have which Virtualbox does not, but Virtualbox is constantly getting updated as well, and many new features are being added with each release.

Windows on Mac, which is the best choice?

I have used both of the commercial alternatives to Virtualbox, but ultimately the handful of features that they have over Virtualbox have not been sufficient to keep me from using this great piece of Open Source software. So give it a try, Download Virtualbox and give it a test drive. Install a copy of Linux or Windows on your Mac and play around with it. The best part is, that when you are done working in the nightmare that is Windows, you can easily switch it off and keep running your favorite software on your Mac.

Windows on Mac with Virtualbox