Sun is in the virtualization game, too. Why?

Turns out Sun has a virtualization solution, too. It's called VirtualBox (pretty good name, actually) and it looks like it's dual licensed open- and closed-source.

Just out of curiosity, I downloaded and unpackedthe "Open Source Edition". There was nothing obvious to click - just a bunch of files that looked like they were designed for CLI compiler invocations. It was kind of like downloading a Linux distro only to find you got just the header files! Needless to say, not a good experience.

The documentation seems to describe a different experience - no doubt I dl'ed the incorrect file.

I may try the other download. In the meantime, I have to wonder: why create yet another product? The field is rather thick at the moment: VMware, Virtuozzo, Virtual Iron, Virtual Server (from Microsoft), Xen (which powers Amazon's EC2), Parallels (for the Mac) and a variety of other niche products, like User Mode Linux. (Check out the full list of virtual machines on wikipedia)

This is especially puzzling since Sun is on Xen's advisory board. Things that make you go "hmmm".

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