Here’s a story; you went and got a brand new PC four or five years ago. It was all shiny and fast and you thought you wanted nothing more? Years flew by and you start to see better hardware and software on the market. You want that, you need that, but you’ll never get that; ‘cause whopsie! The new hardware costs in thousands whopsie number two you find that the latest Mac OS is not compatible and whopsie number threesie that lame VirtualBox you got? That doesn’t work. Our friend gets to be an all-around egghead! (OK maybe not that much). That sound about right to you?
So when one ain’t enough and your hardware ain’t up to it what do you do? You read a few articles online and come to a conclusion that VirtualBox is the best. Well, guess what? It ain’t as cool as they might make you might think. And when you finally want to run High Sierra (latest Mac OS) it fails!
So when you want more, try these type 2 Hypervisors. I’ve tried all these on Windows (32-bit and 64-bit), Mac OS (only VMware-Fusion, Parallels Desktop) and Linux (only QEMU)
VMware-Workstation Pro
First off, it’s the best. Seeing as how VMware practically invented “x86 emulation”, this beast gives you all around best performance. All the bugs in VirtualBox have been patched off, you can even install Android x86 without VT-x on it. And as mentioned, contrary to popular belief, you don’t need VT-x to use it; you only need VT-x/d if you’re running 64-bit guests or if you want to increase processor count.
It comes jam-packed full with all the great VMware-Tools, Virtual Disk mapping and even a feature to convert a physical machine into a VM! But all this comes at a hefty price tag, so I’d recommend you to try VMware-Player first. Only comes up to 9.0.2 for 32-bit and 14 for 64-bit. Also features a bare “metal mode” in Workstation only (Separate, in VMware ESXi Server|
|32-bit Windows| |32-bit Windows with free serial key + VMware Player|
|64-bit Windows| |x86-64 Windows with free key + VMware Player|
VMware-Player
As I said above, VMware player is the best way to try out VMware before buying the full VMware-Workstation. Player, as you might expect has limited developer support and no advanced features such as Disk Mapping and multiple simultaneous VMs. Although it still has the VMware DNA it lacks powerful features like DevOps available in Workstation. A minus to player is that it doesn’t have all the VMware Tools packages preinstalled. Also you can’t “export VMs”. Will-do for the average user. Latest 32-bit is 6.0.5 and 64-bit is 14.0
|32-bit|
|64-bit| |Try: VMware Player 14 BETA|
VMware-Fusion
Only available for Mac OS. Features a hybrid of Player and Workstation with all the best features of both. I really didn’t find much of a problem other than the price tag, but I’ll show you how to get it for free! However if you don’t mind buying that’s fine by me!
|Fusion free|
|Fusion|
QEMU
It stands for quick emulator and it does exactly that! It’s completely different from all the other emulators, as this one emulates the CPU. Confused? Well you’ll have to read this article first. It needs VT-xVT-i + EPT and maybe VT-d OR AMD-v + RVI or else all it will emulate is ARM systems. It’s only available for Linux and you can read all about it in the article mentioned. Plus you can get KVM and Xen on it!
|Get QEMU|
VirtualBox
The only reason this deserves a mention is because it is totally free works great if you are a first-timer. With easy access menus and transparent design, I’d recommend this to anyone wanting to try out new OSs for the first time. Another plus would be that it supports many virtual hard-disks types and VM configuration files. Also note that it’s highly customizable. Available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac and the list goes on. Go to their official site to see the full list. Although if you want to run Android x86, VMware-Player is better! Available for all, 32-bit and 64-bit editions although sometimes it’s a bit buggy.
VirtualBox-Portable
Just a way to get around installing VirtualBox. Download the .exe file (for Windows) and follow the guide!
|PortaVB|
Parallels Desktop
No VM Hosting article is complete without mentioning this! It’s a bit expensive but we’ll give you the full version for free! It’s great for first timers and experienced people alike! Dare I say it, it’s kinda better than all the hypervisors out there (pity its only for Mac L). I’s recommend this to anyone with a Mac (seeing as how a Windows 10 VM has better performance in a MacBook Air than the latest Dell!). I see it as a great lot better than BootCamp and it comes specially optimized for Games/Productivity/Developers (the mode can be selected upon VM creation). It has “Coherence Mode” the same as Unity in VMware and comes with a feature for Cortana.
If you want it free, watch this YouTube video, they’ll show you how. Or go with the direct link, it’s not a virus and will not make you complete surveys etc. or you can bury your head in the sand and go woth official one for a 2 week trial.
|PD Cracked Free Guide| |PD Cracked Direct Link|
Microsoft Virtual Desktop
This isn’t the best solution if you’re looking to run any heavy OS (e.g. Windows 8), but you should do fine if you want to run Windows Vista or XP. As this is a Microsoft product, you’ll only see compatibility for Microsoft-based OSs. And just to discourage you; it emulates an Intel Pentium II CPU, with Intel 1200 GPU (note that it isn’t Intel HD 1200!). Only for Windows and Macintosh.
|For Mac| for G-based processors only
Windows 7 (only) users, get it from Windows Update with: |Component3|
Limbo PC Emulator
This’ll be one of those things you’d have never thought possible. Believe it or not, this small (9MB) hypervisor comes for Android! (And no, don’t expect to install Windows 7 on it) There are plenty og guides for running Windows 95 on it and a cuppla tuts telling you how to install Windows 10 (the irony being, Windows 10 is faster. K ?) there are some pluses, mainly, you don’t need root access. The downs, you will defiantly need a pretty damn high end device (Quad Core, 4GB RAM, 16GB Internal etc.) I’d recommend it for tabs. It essentially converts x86 instructions to ARM and runs them. Now, I find this very tiring, not to mention $%&#ing slow. The fastest OS was Windows 10 IoT Core ARM edition. It’s available mainly for ARM devices but you can run it on x86 devices. It can’t handle anything big, but anything, either small or built for ARM (like the above stated Win10) will work fine.
|Limbo PC Emulator Google Play|
|Limbo PC Emulator Official Site|
Stock VM Hosting Programs:
These programs such as Microsoft’s Windows XP Mode or Apple’s BootCamp are great for a single task and come with virtually no Developer support. I’ve only tried Hyper-V and it was only good for a few things. Try at your own risk!
That said, there is a full list of all the Hypervisors on Wikipedia |HERE|
Help Ahoy! 
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