Making use of Linux’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) opens up new possibilities while users can still enjoy the VirtualBox VMM itself. The KVM support is part of the mainline kernel so there is less worries with not having to use the VirtualBox kernel driver, KVM tends to support new features quite quickly, and tends to be more actively developed than VirtualBox and is embraced by a range of organizations. Early users of this backend by Cyberus customers are said to be experiencing better performance too.
VirtualBox has it’s own advantages, for starters some people may find it’s GUI easier to use. It also has certain unique features not found in other opensource hypervisors, such as seamless mode. Finally, VirtualBox may have better compatibility or performance with certain operating systems. For instance, in my case when I wanted to get GhostBSD working on virt-manager, I ran into lot of issues, such as not being able to install it in UEFI mode, mouse not working etc, whereas it ran and installed without any issues at all using VirtualBox.
Yes that is indeed a thing Oracle is notorious for, but with VirtualBox the only concern is with their proprietary extension pack. VirtualBox itself is licensed under GPLv2, so there’s no issues using it in a commercial environment. However, the extension pack is for personal use only. Luckily, the extension pack isn’t really a necessity any more - back in the day, it was needed for USB 3.0 support, but now it’s only needed for VirtualBox’s built-in RDP, disk encryption, Intel PXE boot ROM, and webcam passthru. If you don’t need these features - which most people don’t - then you can use the main VirtualBox package without any worries.
Thanks for the fantastic write up. It has been about 5ish years since I used VBox. Back then extensions were still needed for USB to work so this is good news.
VBox was always a great software, Oracle getting it really sucked