Best Virtual Machine Software

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction. Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x and 4.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD. VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company.

Whether you need to run Windows programs that don’t have Mac versions, or you are making the switch from PC to Mac and need to transfer your data, Parallels Desktop has you covered. Develop & test across multiple OSes in a virtual machine for Mac. Access Microsoft Office for Windows and Internet Explorer. Fast—run Windows apps without slowing down your Mac. Quickly move files, apps and more from a PC to a Mac. Use Windows side-by-side with macOS (no restarting required) on your MacBook, MacBook Pro, iMac, iMac Pro, Mac mini or Mac Pro. Share files and folders, copy and paste images and text & drag and drop files between Mac and Windows applications. Parallels Desktop automatically detects what you need to get started so you are up and going within minutes! If you need Windows, you’ll be prompted to Download and Install Windows 10 OR Choose your existing Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, or Boot Camp installation.

QEMU is a generic and open-source machine emulator and virtualizer. Run operating systems for any machine, on any supported architecture. Run programs for another Linux/BSD target, on any supported architecture. Run KVM and Xen virtual machines with near-native performance. Guest memory dumps are now fully supported, along with pre-copy/post-copy migration and background guest snapshots. Support for nw DEVICE_UNPLUG_GUEST_ERROR to detect guest-reported hotplug failures. macOS hosts with Apple Silicon CPUs now support ‘hvf’ accelerator for AArch64 guests. M-profile MVE extension is now supported for Cortex-M55. AMD SEV guests now support measurement of kernel binary when doing direct kernel boot (not using a bootloader). Support for vhost-user and numa mem options across all boards.

VMware Workstation Pro is the industry standard for running multiple operating systems as virtual machines (VMs) on a single Linux or Windows PC. IT professionals, developers and businesses who build, test or demo software for any device, platform or cloud rely on Workstation Pro. VMware Workstation Pro allows you to run multiple operating systems at once on the same Windows or Linux PC. Create real Linux and Windows VMs and other desktop, server, and tablet environments, complete with configurable virtual networking and network condition simulation, for use in code development, solution architecting, application testing, product demonstrations and more. Securely connect with vSphere, ESXi or other Workstation servers to launch, control and manage both virtual machines (VMs) and physical hosts. A common VMware hypervisor maximizes productivity and enables easy transfer of VMs to and from your local PC.

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc. KVM is open source software. The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as of 2.6.20. The userspace component of KVM is included in mainline QEMU, as of 1.3.

VMware Fusion gives Mac users the power to run Windows on Mac along with hundreds of other operating systems side by side with Mac applications, without rebooting. Fusion is simple enough for home users and powerful enough for IT professionals, developers and businesses. Running Windows on Mac is only the beginning. VMware Fusion lets you choose from hundreds of supported operating systems, from lesser-known Linux distributions to the latest Windows 10 release, to run side by side with the latest macOS release. Fusion makes it simple to test nearly any OS and app on a Mac. Build and test apps in a sandbox while securely sharing local source files and folders. Fusion Pro now includes a RESTful API to integrate with modern development tools like Docker, Vagrant, Ansible, Chef, and others to fit the power of VMware into today’s Agile and DevOps-oriented production pipelines.