May 29, 2008 4:33 PM PDT
Sun's VirtualBox hits 5 million downloads
I didn't pay much attention to VirtualBox when Sun Microsystems first acquired Innotek, but RedMonk's Michael Coté just posted an interview and demo of the software, and it's very cool.
In a few clicks, you can see VirtualBox create a Vista instance and run it on the Mac. There are many options for virtualization at this point, but I would expect Sun to make this its weapon of choice (versus Xen), since it owns it and can tweak it for Solaris.
On the Mac, I'm not sure it's any better than Parallels, but it is open-source, which should be very appealing for many users.
VirtualBox is a free download available under the General Public License, or GPL.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
