Q, free virtualization software for the Mac
Q is a Cocoa port of QEMU, a free processor emulator.
From the site:
Run Windows, Linux and a lot more Systems on your Mac. Q is a feature packed cocoa port of QEMU: Switch fast between guest PCs. Save and restart guest PCs at any stage. Easily exchange Files between Host and Guest. Q makes use of OS X most advanced technologies like openGL, quartz and coreaudio to accelerate your experience with your guest PC. Please remember: At the present state, QEMU is still considered ALPHA software.
I haven't gotten around to trying it out yet as Parallels is serving my needs fine, but it's good to know there's another option out there.
Comments
My understanding is that QEMU is an emulator and the new alpha virtualization feature just makes Q run faster but it's still not full virtualization (according to the website). I tried Q some time ago and it was slow and fussy (and pretty ugly) but it worked - at least for Windows 2000. I haven't tried the latest release so with the virtualization it may have improved, even dramatically?
I've switched away from Parallels and I'm using VMware Fusion now, BTW.
I've switched away from Parallels and I'm using VMware Fusion now, BTW.
As Sean mentioned QEMU is just an emulator and runs at dramatically reduced speed. For a true virtualization system that's free and Open Source check out <a href="http://www.virtualbox.org/">VirtualBox<...;. The OS X version is in beta right now, but it looks promising as a free solution.
