I’ve been using virtualbox 1.5 on XP to run Debian Etch, and have found it usable and stable so far. Earlier versions of vbox/etch were crashing on me, but those issues seem to be resolved.
Things get interesting when you start benchmarking vms…
- benchmark. free and open source) virtualbox 1.5.0 vs. (free, closed source) vmware server 1.0.3.
- benchmark. (pre 1.5) virtualbox vs. (free, closed source) vmware player (not server).
- benchmark. virtualbox 1.5 vs. vmware server 1.0.3 vs. Virtualpc 2007.
- feature comparison. virtualbox vs ($$, closed source) parallels vs vmware.
“Remote USB support” is interesting - you can apparently run vbox on a server, and use local usb devices.
I found this fix for vmware on debian.