prolly dumb q, why do we need the vm window?

[yournamehere]

this isn't so much about vbox itself but will there ever be something like virtualbox/vmware that doesn't confine windows apps to the vm window? like where I can start an xp app and it runs right on my linux desktop next to emacs, instead of forever stuck in the vm window?

I realize there's wine but I'm not talking about that sort of thing - I'm wondering how come the virtual machine vmware/vbox creates has to itself be contained within a window (as opposed to a process somewhere out of view and it instead just pops up windows apps as we start them but in effect they're still part of the vm 'window' that we can't see).

[Sasquatch]

The GUI is always needed for some managing of the VM (like mounting CDs/ISO files, sending some keystrokes, shutting down and other stuff like that. If you want your Guest window next to your Host window, you might want to take a look at Seamless Mode. This is only available for Windows and Linux Guests after the GA are installed.