Understanding Virtual box

[spectric]

Hi all

I need some help understanding Virtual box and what are its capabilities. I gather that it provides a virtual x86 windows platform on another platform so that you can run Windows programs. So if you have an Android device using a Mediatek CPU then will VB provide the capability to run a basic Windows prograam on this device and as far as it is concerned it will think it is running on a Windows platform? or am I looking at this to simplistically.

thanks Roy

[towo2099]

No, VBox is a x86 virtualizer. In simple words, it gives you a complete virtual x86 PC.
VBpx would never run on android or arm cpu to provide a x86 vm.
Why not read the manual? https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/UserManual.html

[spectric]

Thanks for the feedback, will look at that manual.

[World Domination Studios]

It doesn't provide a Windows anything. If you want to run Windows programs on your Vbox virtual machine, you'd have to put Windows on it first.

[mpack]

In summary, VirtualBox provides a simulation of the hardware of a PC, NOT including the CPU. It's a supervisor (a.k.a. hypervisor) that allows the "guest" code to run natively at native speeds, but any attempt by guest code to access or inspect peripheral hardware is intercepted, and a background interrupt sends back a simulation of some piece of hardware that the VM platform is configured to provide.

VirtualBox does not simulate Windows or any other "guest" software: if you want software to run inside the VM then you'll have get an installer for it, then install it.

Frankly there is absolutely no chance of running an x86 hypervisor on a non-x86 processor such as one with an ARM core.

Running VirtualBox on Android-x86 might be possible, the main obstacle there is that there is no financial incentive to support such a rare variant of Android, which itself is not mainstream in business PCs (businesses needs drive all VirtualBox development).