Windows as a Guest OS

T

tsahar

I am not that experienced when it comes to FreeBSD but I have had my share of FreeBSD installations (mainly as file servers on desktops); and have also used (i.e. experimented with) FreeBSD as a Guest OS on my Windows laptop.

I have, however, never tried running Windows as a Guest OS on a FreeBSD host, and haven't read much about user experiences of this scenario either.

My intention of using FreeBSD as a host is to shift most of my usage to FreeBSD and use Windows (as a Guest) only for running some business apps that are exclusive to the latter. I have read the documentation [1], and have also done a basic, obligatory Google and Forum search but didn't find anything useful. Before I venture into this unknown territory (for me, that is) I would appreciate it if people could share their experience and point out pros and cons of going this route.



[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/virtualization-host-virtualbox.html
 
At work, I have Windows running in VirtualBox and it's fine. I was able to install guest additions, and while I make almost no use of it, aside from it being a little slow, it's certainly usuable. I installed VirtualBox from ports or packages (I've forgotten which), using emulators/virtualbox-ose without any issues that I can remember.

This is Windows as a guest on a FreeBSD-10.1 host, with an i3 processor and 8 GB of RAM. I've run XP, Windows-7 and Windows-10.
 
3D acceleration does not work in the VM, so fast Windows games are not practical. Clipboard cut/paste and direct file sharing between host and VM might not work, but network access like scp can be used (Cygwin on the Windows side).

Other than that, just remember to update the VirtualBox kernel module when the operating system is updated, and it works very well.
 
I've been using Virtualbox for a number of years to run Windows because my employer VPN clients only supports with Windows or OS X and I need it to work from home. I have successfully run Win XP Pro, Win XP Pro 64, and currently running Windows 7. 3D acceleration does not work as mentioned...but I have played Rome Total War and Caesar III successfully - but yes it was significantly slower, but still usable. Applications such as IE, Chrome, Remote Desktop and flash all work fine.

The bi-direction clipboard seems to flaky after certain updates. Make sure to read the installation notes to enable USB pass through.
 
BTW, are there any plans to include Windows guest support for BHyVe? Sometimes I need Windows to access MSSQL database...
 
For me, it works like a charm, except for the USB passthrough feature which doesn't work at all. I installed FreeBSD 64bit from ports, then VirtualBox from ports as well. The documentation is not always up to date so you need to be able to read between the lines. You may encounter issues during the installation, so fix them one at the time using Google. That worked for me. On my system, I'll give the USB passthrough problem another try on the next big VirtualBox release. v5.0 will eventually be ported to FreeBSD. Btw, THANK YOU SO MUCH to the talented maintainers. Your skills amaze me!

Many people say that Windows as a guest is slower. Everything is relative! My original Windows NT 4.0 was on a Pentium III computer, so my Windows NT 4.0 guest is now lighting fast using the iCore7. So happy about that! :)

Dominique.
 
I think when you want to use passtrough, you need to make sure that the host system does not grab the USB device (loads drivers for it). Passthrough works for me an VirtualBox 4.x very well. It's painless for devices that are not recognized at all by FreeBSD and for the others, I need to configure devd.conf to skip autoloading of kernel modules.
 
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