VirtualBox is a virtual machine manager that allows you to run multiple operating systems for x86/x86-64 processors on your computer. The list of supported guest systems includes different versions of Windows, different Linux distributions and various other, more exotic products. VirtualBox is used for full virtualization, which means that you can run unmodified operating systems on it and from their point of view the virtual machine will be no different from the physical computer.

There are no virtualization mechanisms, so you can only run guest systems designed for the same processor architecture, but in return you get performance close to the system installed directly on your computer. VirtualBox is classified as type two hypervisors, i.e. it works as a program running on a given host system.

Virtualized guest systems therefore work "two levels" from the hardware. In addition to booting operating systems, VirtualBox also allows you to save and restore their states, which is particularly useful during testing. A guest system can share clipboard content, USB and serial devices, SCSI controllers and selected folders with its host.

In addition, the windows of some guest systems can be displayed on the desktop as if they worked natively in the host system. You can also connect to the guest system using the remote desktop and record activities on the desktop. If the guest system is one of Windows, VirtualBox can provide OpenGL 2.0 and (experimentally) Direct3D 8 and 9 hardware acceleration.

In addition, it is possible to virtualize 64-bit systems on 32-bit processors and use Intel VT-x and AMD-V hardware virtualization. They can support SMP with up to 32 virtual computing units. When you create the machine on which the guest system will be installed, you can select the amount of operating memory, disk space and virtual disk storage format and its location.

Once you have created your machine, you can choose which peripherals will be available to it (even floppy disk station), the type of chipset, the number of processor cores available to your guest system, the parameters of your graphics card, sound, network, shared folders and ports. Many VirtualBox functions are not included in the basic package. It is also worth downloading the VirtualBox Extension Pack.