Simple Mac virtualisation

摘要

Although virtualisation and emulation technologies have been around for decades in the world of big iron mainframes, it's only in the last year or so that virtualisation is starting to appear on desktop machines. The advantages are obvious. With a virtualisation shell you can multiboot OS X, Windows, Linux, other Unix variants, and even DOS all on the same machine. This has obvious curiosity value, but the practical applications shouldn't be dismissed.rnCommercial virtualisation products are well known, but an Open Source project called VirtualBox offers many of the same features for free. As this is an Open Source tool you can download the source code and customise it. This will be more of a theoretical than an actual benefit for most users, but it's a useful extra plus point. Unlike BootCamp, which requires a reboot, VirtualBox can switch to a different operating system (OS) almost instantly. It can also save OS snapshots, so you can experiment with settings, quarantine difficult applications and create OS environments which are optimised for different work, such as coding and development, and web browsing. If the OS crashes, you can restart rather than rebooting.