Linux Mint inside Windows with VMWare or VirtualBox

[playful]

Hi everyone,

Greetings from New Zealand.
Wow, I love Linux Mint. Running it inside Windows, and it's doing great!

I searched the forum to see what other people were saying about virtualization and couldn't find much, so I thought I'd share my findings in case anyone wants to follow the same trail. It's all good news. Comparing VirtualBox and VMWare, the short story for me, unless you too want to try both, is VMWare. Explaining why below.

For the record, I am using a Vista-64 system with 4GB RAM, allocating 896MB to Linux Mint.
If you are wondering whether to invest the time installing LM8 in a virtual machine, let me reassure you. It works. You can set up LM8 to run either on:
- VMWare Player 3.0.1 inside Windows or
- VirtualBox inside Windows
Both are free.

I was prepared to prefer VirtualBox because:
- it's a smaller download
- it's open source
- it has a few more functions (cloning the VM and snapshots).

I started with VirtualBox and was ecstatic that it worked. However, I had a few disappointments:
- complex install
- bug in full-screen mode on my system (there may be a workaround, enquiring about it on the VB forum)
- less stable (lost the saved state a few times).

On the other hand, VMWare Player has been working perfectly. On the downside,
- you need to give your email to download the software,
- large download (90MB),
- after installing, the Player still wants to download VMWare Tools (and you must install them to get things to work, just as you need to install VM Additions in VirtualBox).

Overall, at the moment, leaning toward VMWare because I have a couple issues on the VirtualBox install (full-screen bug and lost VM states).
Wish it were VirtualBox as it's open-source and you never know when VMWare might change their policy.

More details about how to install on the link at the bottom!

Wishing you all lots of fun with LM8...
Thank you Clement & everyone on the Linux Mint team!

Smiles,

[Synthros]

Thanks for the info! Do you happen to recall if the full screen mode in Virtual Box threw an error, or did it just crash the virtual session?