Open Source or Free Substitute to Parallels or Fusion for Mac OS X

Question

Are there any products such as Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion 2.0 that are free or open source?

I'd like to run Windows from my Mac from (Intel based) Mac OS X but would prefer not to have to buy one of these products.

~~And if there are no other (or functional) solution, which of these products are superior and why?~~

Update: Not sure it matters, but I mainly want to run Windows Vista Ultimate.

Dave Drager · Answer 1 · 2009-06-17 19:25:58Z

up vote 11 down vote accepted

Check out VirtualBox.

It even has seamless mode where you can run your program in a 'native' window on the desktop.

answered Jun 17 '09 at 19:13

	Thanks. I can also use this to run Linux! :-) – Frank V Jun 17 '09 at 19:21
	I had hard time to find what "per-window" virtualization is in Parallels or Fusion, which is not supported on VirtualBox. Would you post a link? Thanks. – Sunny Jun 17 '09 at 19:22
	Thats funny, because I use it on Linux command line so that I can run Windows GUI remotely! :) – Dave Drager Jun 17 '09 at 19:22
	Sunny, by per-window I meant seamless. And you are right - you can run seamless with VirtualBox, I forgot about that. Will update my response. – Dave Drager Jun 17 '09 at 19:25
	I replaced Parallels with VirtualBox and am much happier. The VMs are snappier, not to mention cross platform. We'll see how Oracle handles this incredible product in the future. – Scott Pack Jun 17 '09 at 19:39

feedback

chmeee · Answer 2 · 2009-06-17 19:14:30Z

up vote 4 down vote

You could try VirtualBox. It supports MacOS and has good reviews.

answered Jun 17 '09 at 19:14

chmeee
3,6381828

feedback

Sunny · Answer 3 · 2009-06-17 19:13:58Z

up vote 3 down vote

virtualbox works on OS X (intel). It also supports "seamless" windows, i.e. opening an windows app on your Mac desktop.

answered Jun 17 '09 at 19:13

Sunny
1,841616

feedback

bhen · Answer 4 · 2009-07-02 03:59:13Z

up vote 0 down vote

I would recommend VirtualBox, it has a nice Remote Desktop setting on beta version which can emulate Unity on Vmware Fusion.

answered Jul 2 '09 at 3:59

Thanks but that answer was already give and furthermore it was accepted as the answer.... – Frank V Jul 2 '09 at 15:41

feedback

4 Answers