John, On Wednesday 17 October 2012 17:37:19 John A. Wallace wrote: > While I have enormous appreciation of Oracle VirtualBox, having no doubt > that most reasonable persons share this opinion as well, it is not yet > perfect. Yet, perfection of software is also not an expectation of > reasonable persons but only a mark of excellence toward which to strive > earnestly.
Right, VirtualBox is indeed not perfect nor bug free. > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Frank Mehnert [mailto:[email protected]] > > Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2012 3:56 AM > > To: Community mailing list of VirtualBox users > > Subject: Re: [VBox-users] change from IDE Controller to SATA > > > > John, > > > > On Tuesday 16 October 2012 08:44:47 John A. Wallace wrote: > > > One more question arises in regard to this, does Virtual Box provide > > > drivers for the SATA Controllers/Disks for Windows XP to use for > > > attaching one of these devies? I had thought that they would be in > > > > the > > > > > guest additions, but apparently not. The lack of native support for > > > these devices by Windows XP explains how I ended up with the IDE > > > attachment, but I do still want to move it to SATA. Thanks. > > > > VirtualBox does not provide Windows drivers to support SATA. There is > > no reason to do so. If the guest supports SATA then it will surely > > provide drivers for this hardware itself. > > The drivers to enable support for these devices on systems that do not > support them natively normally come from the hardware vendors along with > the devices themselves. Since VirtualBox is in the business of providing a > platform for the virtualization of hardware, which is to present (i.e., an > emulation of) a hardware-like environment to the guest OS, it would seem > like a natural extension of this idea to include the hardware drivers. > After all, one would not expect hardware vendors themselves to be inclined > to provide VirtualBox with the very drivers needed to bypass their > products. I do not agree. VirtualBox ships a lot of devices to support various guest operating systems. For instance, use the PCnet network card for older OSes, use the E1000 device for newer OSes. Use the legacy IDE controller for older OSes, use the SATA controller for newer OSes. Shipping device drivers as part of the VirtualBox Guest Additions increases the load to the development team *a lot*. First, we have to take care of the license issues. If we allowed to redistribute drivers then we have to check if only in binary form or if we are allowed to provide the driver sources (keep in mind that most of the Guest Additions code is open source). If we are not allowed to redistribute drivers, develop drivers ourself. And SATA drivers a very complex. We had also to keep track of the security issues, release updates if there were any issues found. And so on. And this just to provide a driver for a guest which does not ship the driver itself but which works perfectly with an alternative device? If you ask me, that's too much of effort for too less benefit. I would rather spend that time for fixing bugs and implementing new features, and our resources are very limited (unfortunately) and I assume you agree here. Thanks for understanding, Frank -- Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_sfd2d_oct
_______________________________________________ VBox-users-community mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/vbox-users-community _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
