> VirtualBox and KVM/VirtManager come to mind, both work for free, VirtualBox will run on Windows computers, and both work on Linux machines. There are many others too.

I have both and have used both, and while VirtualBox is a servicable product and is free, it does not "work as well" in my experience as HyperV.

Notably, even before Docker For Windows Beta, a hand-built Docker HyperV instance was notably faster than the VBoxHeadless variant.

I'm not sure why paying money for a good virtualization package is bad. Certainly on the OSX side VMware is a truckload more stable and light years better at supporting any sort of task that has a display requirement.

Yes, but that applies only to very limited headless machines. As soon as you want to use graphics or peripherals hyper-v will not suffice.

True, but headless machines are the subject of discussion.

Enable the RemoteFX GPU support in the VM then.

Occasionally a Windows update will come down the pipe that kills Virtualbox stone dead, and it's not always fixed (on the VBox side) ASAP. Just a cryptic error in the event viewer, that's all you get.

This is purely anecdotal, but I've used Virtualbox for years (on host machines of windows xp -> windows 10 and every version in between, plus several linux distros) and never once ran into this issue.

I ran into this problem last week on Win10 when I had to fire up a linux VM to do some troubleshooting for work. Found the answer in the VBox forums, and saw the same thing in the forums a couple of times in previous years.

I was lucky in that there were new builds to download (I don't use it often), but the answer for each of the forum threads was "wait".

On a tangent, this win10 box is my gaming box, and I haven't changed any of the settings regarding updates - it's just stock win10 stuff. Which is amusing when win10 gives you the "we're rebooting, you can either do it now or in 15 minutes" bit (different to the 4-hour delay option). I've come back from dinner to find the machine freshly rebooted. :)

HyperV and VirtualBox (or VMWare) cannot co-exist on the same machine.

So basically, if you want to do windows development you have to give up the alternatives

> So basically, if you want to do windows development you have to give up the alternatives

What? You can run Windows guests on Virtualbox.

VirtualBox still runs fine on a Windows machine with HyperV active. (I have a mixture of VMs in both and while I try not to run them side-by-side I don't have problems with either running.)

Maybe this has been fixed with AU, but previously you had to practially dual-boot windows to use both: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/SwitchEasilyBetweenVirtualBoxA...

I'm currently running Windows 8.1. I've got an ancient XP VM in VirtualBox I need to run sometimes and also use the Hyper-V-based VS Android and Windows mobile emulators and don't have obvious issues running one or the other. I haven't done anything other than installs to get things running.