# VirtualBox 34 Hacker News commenters recommended VirtualBox and 33 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 18 years (3 owners). **Verdict:** Free, cross-platform virtual machine app that runs the same on Linux, Windows and Mac and is easy to set up. Common caveat: graphics, clipboard and guest-integration bugs. ## Why people recommend it - Runs the same on Linux, Windows and Mac (2 comments): "My default hypervisor is VirtualBox, because it runs the same on Linux, Windows and Mac" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48060382)) "worked faster in a linux VM on Windows (through VirtualBox) than on Windows" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47253740)) - Easy to set up (3 comments): "Use VirtualBox. Seriously, it won't look cool, but it will 100% work after maybe 5 mins mucking around with installing guest additions." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46386195)) "virtualbox is free for non-commercial use and pretty simple to set up" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46699664)) "It literally walks you through a VM creation." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47272599)) - Sandboxing untrusted code and AI agents (4 comments): "letting Claude run in a Virtualbox VM. It's easy to use, no issues with observability" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47686661)) "I like running Claude in a VirtualBox VM managed by a Vagrantfile." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48500853)) "I run Claude in a full VirtualBox VM managed by Vagrant." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48354404)) - Guest operating systems run well (4 comments): "which works perfectly fine running as a guest under Xubuntu on a 4790k" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48384705)) "Linux via their VirtualBox port works, usable with 32GB Ram" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46842981)) "running KDE in VirtualBox in full-screen mode must be fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46584671)) ## What people warn about - Frequent bugs and regressions (5 comments): "It's so useful but so buggy." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691765)) "I couldn't get virtio working, because VirtualBox 7 had a regression with it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46577998)) "a bug in VirtualBox is making one core run at 100% the entire time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46868466)) - Keyboard layout and alt-tab conflicts (3 comments): "The only major issues I see there are precisely with alt-tab" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46087148)) "this forced US-layout setup created a conflict with VirtualBox that I was unable to solve" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46002502)) "telling it to use the layout with any keyboard conflicted with VirtualBox" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46001622)) - Software-only graphics and clipboard limits (3 comments): "VirtualBox has really broken graphics support, you can only run software rendering Linux DEs that way." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47300942)) "VirtualBox has a broken clipboard (supposedly they plan to fix it), and it's only software rendering." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115589)) "struggling to play some DX3-7 games because of VirtualBox and VMware limitations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228299)) - Oracle licensing fees for commercial use (2 comments): "Oracle fining us for every VirtualBox install and the company sent The IT Spanish Inquisition around to make sure we all deleted it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48231569)) "Ah, the Oracle and Broadcom model - Java, Virtualbox, VMware, etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45815520)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [QEMU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/qemu.md): 114 recommend - [UTM](https://hackerapproved.com/p/utm.md): 49 recommend - [Lima](https://hackerapproved.com/p/lima.md): 31 recommend - [Vagrant](https://hackerapproved.com/p/vagrant.md): 25 recommend - [Tart by Cirrus Labs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/tart.md): 20 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "VirtualBox", https://hackerapproved.com/p/virtualbox/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).