Recently we talked about OSBoxes, a site dedicated to distributing Linux virtual machines ready to use in both VirtualBox and VMWare. That article introduced us to David García Prados and to his Virtual Machines project, which follows a similar line but places greater emphasis on VirtualBox, with the inclusion of small tutorials, as well as offering development environments and other secondary resources.
The Eternal Question: VirtualBox or VMWare?
A fairly frequent question when virtualizing is the classic “VirtualBox or VMWare?” I have personally had very good results with both, but many users out there prefer VirtualBox for its flexibility, while others swear by VMWare's superior performance. The basic recommendation is to try them both, and see which fits your needs best. Now, if you decide to start with VirtualBox, we have something special for you.
It's Virtual Machines, a GitHub project by David García Prados. There he offers a list of images compatible with VirtualBox in OVA format of different Linux distros, development environments, and other tools, along with a section of tutorials that help us solve the main configuration conflicts in the virtualizer.
By clicking on each entry you can see photos of the virtualized environment, and some technical details. For example, the Lubuntu Bionic 18.04.2 image comes almost “naked”. It barely includes VirtualBox Guest Additions, Synaptic, and a basic Python server. There are no browsers or OpenOffice, and each extra element must be installed manually. In total, the OVA file does not exceed 400 megabytes, and it works wonderfully (in fact, I would love to have a “stripped” ISO like that).
For the next test I decided to download the ReactOS image, an operating system that always draws attention for its binary compatibility with Windows programs and drivers, but here my luck ended. ReactOS is so focused on duplicating Windows functions that it already imitates blue screens... (?)
Don't know how to inject these Virtual Machines images into the VirtualBox interface? Don't worry: The tutorials section has all the instructions, but in general terms we go to File, choose Import Virtualized Service, find the OVA file, select a destination folder for the virtual machine (without changing its configuration), and accept. Take a visit to Virtual Machines, and download what you need.
Official site and downloads: Click here
https://old.neoteo.com/distros-de-linux-online-distrotest/
