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I have been looking at a range of virtual players: VMPlayer, VirtualPC, VirtualBox and few others.

It's clear that VMPlayer is for home use only, but is there a free player that can be used commercially? We are interested in running Ubuntu server for testing, but so far we haven't found a clear statement on Oracle's site saying that we can use VirtualBox for free.

Thank you

user9517
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vikp
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5 Answers5

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If this is commercial use, do yourself a favor and buy a license for VMWare Workstation and be done with it. The extra features beyond the basic player will be appreciated.

I wouldn't invest in Virtualbox now that Oracle is behind it. When it was Sun, I had no problems, but I wouldn't trust anything with Oracle's name on it.

Virtual PC is fine if you're just going to virtualize XP inside Windows 7, but if you want to run Linux VMs you're going to want something a little more vendor neutral and robust... like something from VMWare.

Marshalus
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For the server side you can use Hyper-V Server 2008 R2. Depending on what your desktops are running Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate includes an updated version of Virtual PC. If you can provide a little more detail, like what OS you're planing on virtualizing in the server/desktop we can probably tailor the answers a little better.

ErnieTheGeek
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I use qemu with the kvm without issues, is released under the GPLv3 (read you can use it for commercial purpose as well) and it supports the hardware virtualization, so I think it's the best solution.

tmow
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VMPlayer is free for commercial use after you apply for it: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/141386

Jerry33
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You can use the VirtualBox Open Source Edition for free. Currently it lacks USB passthrough, RDP and USB over RDP. It does however include VNC. All other features are identical.

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions

bahamat
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