Compare Parallels Desktop for Mac vs QEMU vs VirtualBox vs VMWare workstation vs Windows Virtual PC (System virtual machines software comparison matrix)
Please update any mistake or add any missing criteria or virtualization software.
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| Parallels Desktop for Mac | KVM/QEMU | VirtualBox | VMWare workstation | Windows Virtual PC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Website | http://www.parallels.com/en/products/desktop/ | http://www.qemu.org/ | http://www.virtualbox.org/ | http://www.vmware.com/products/ws/ | http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/ |
| Release date | 2010-12-15 | 2011-05-07 | 2011-07-19 | 2010-11-18 | 2010-03-17 |
| Latest version | 6.0.11990.621014 | 0.14.1 | 4.1 | 7.1.3 | 6.1.7600 |
| License | Proprietary | GPL/LGPL | Proprietary / GPL | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Price | 79.99$ | Free | Free for personal use | Free / 189$ | Free |
| Features | |||||
| Multi-core support | No | - | Yes | Yes | No |
| GUI | Yes | No but several third parties available | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| USB support | Yes | Yes | Yes UDB over RDP | Yes | No |
| Snapshot support | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Emulate other architectures | No | Yes ARM, MIPS, SPARC, Alpha... | No | No | No |
| Storage formats | QCOW2/QCOW VMDK (VMware) VHD (Windows virtual PC) (Bochs) cloop (Knoppix) VDI (VirtualBox) Raw format | VDI (VirtualBox) VMDK (VMware) VHD (Windows virtual PC) | VMDK (VMware) VHD (Windows virtual PC) | VHD (Windows virtual PC) | |
| Host supported platforms | |||||
| Windows | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Mac OS | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
| Guest runnable OS | |||||
| Windows | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes not official; some unsupported features |
| Mac OS | Yes Mac OS X Server | No | Yes Mac OS X Server | No | No |
| Solaris | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| DOS | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Your reviews | |||||
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2010-12-20 23:16:54
2013-01-27 20:45:53
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