Basically, the current VirtualBox system is really not scalable enough to handle all the guest OS and variants.
There are like 400+ Linux distro variants, with ~20 versions each (Fedora 1...16)..., ~= 8,000 Linux versions. What is needed, is to handle all the sub-types gracefully, without making a drop-down list of 8000 versions. Why is this important ? 1. Default virtual hardware / drivers: Some people ask will it work to create a Red Hat VM and install Ubuntu, or even Windows on it... well... It will work, if you have the correct drivers. In the case of Windows XP, you will need a special SATA Hard Disk driver, plus a special Intel network PRO/1000 driver. If you choose Windows XP as GuestOS type, VBox will choose virtual hardware that is more XP-friendly, which will work without drivers (using drivers that are built-in into XP). 2. OVF/OVA Interoperability: This format allows VBox to exchange VMs with VMware Both VM Import and Export should work correctly with all OS types. 3. Unattended install: Automated install of guest OSes *requires* exact match of the OS. Experimental patch here: https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=46798 NOTE: This patch adds sub-versions, new Guest OS Types, such as Linux-RHEL3/4/5 versions, but in an ugly way. -- -Alexey Eromenko "Technologov" _______________________________________________ vbox-dev mailing list [email protected] https://www.virtualbox.org/mailman/listinfo/vbox-dev
