Virtual Box

VirtualBox is a virtualization software developed by Sun Microsystems that was later acquired by Oracle.  Like VMware Workstation, they aim to create environments for installation of separate systems. It allows the installation and use of an operating system inside another, as well as their software as two or more independent computers, but sharing the same physical hardware.

Created by the company Innotek, they initially offered a proprietary license, a version of the product for personal use without charge. In January 2007 were released VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition) with the GPL (GNU General Public License) version 2. In February 2008 Innoteck was  acquired by Sun Microsystems. On April 20, 2009 Oracle bought Sun Microsystems and all of its products, including VirtualBox.

VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with internal programming interfaces and a well-defined design client / server. This makes it easy to control several interfaces at once. For example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical GUI machine and then control that machine from a command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a complete software development kit, although it is open source, you do not have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
 

The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent from the local machines. Therefore, settings can be easily transferred to other computers.
VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside the Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration more precise. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (eg, resizing the client window).
 
Like many other virtualization solutions, to facilitate data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can be accessed from within virtual machines.