Hello! I have been reading from a couple of people on this list that Virtualbox is going away and will not be in stretch when it becomes the stable distro shortly.
I use Virtualbox for a couple of Windows machines to do the last task I cannot yet migrate to Debian (due to specialist software that is not made for Linux). I am starting to contemplate migrating from Virtualbox to a different virtualisation solution that will be supported in Stretch. My needs are fairly vanilla -- I have a 4-core-with-hyperthreading Intel Core i7 920 CPU, circa 2009, and 24GB or RAM in the host. I run 2 VMs, not all the time, which have 2 CPUs and 4GB of RAM each. Access to physical optical drive, and virtual disks, is important. Shared folders with the host OS (which is currently Jessie and will be Stretch in the future) is important. 2D graphics is important, 3D less so. Ability to access physical USB equipment attached to the host would be nice but not a show-stopper. I have never got that working completely satisfactorily with my Virtualbox install, but suspect that is due more to insufficient time reading documentation than it is to limitations in the software (which should illustrate the importance of that element of things). Minimal time futzing around to get the virtualisation solution working is important, as is not having to learn an entirely new paradigm to use the software. Stability of the result is also important. And finally, a neat solution to migrate my Virtualbox machines to the new environment is very important -- I would infinitely prefer not to have to re-install from scratch into the new environment but would prefer to be able to migrate my Virtualbox disks to the new environment somehow, if anything supports that. So my question is, is there an alternative solution in Debian that allows for that easy migration path -- any recommendations? Thanks Mark
