Table 1

List of common desktop virtual machines for Windows, LINUX and Mac OS X operating systems.

Host OS
Virtualization Software
WINDOWS as Guest OS
LINUX as Guest OS
Mac OS X as Guest OS

Windows OS





VMware Workstation
Yes
yes
no

Microsoft Virtual PC
Yes
yes
no

SUN Virtual BOX
Yes
yes
no
LINUX OS





VMWare
Yes
yes
no

Citrix XEN
Yes
yes
no

Virtual Iron
Yes
yes
no
MAC OS





VMWare Fusion
Yes
yes
yes*

Parallels Server
Yes
yes
yes*

Mac OS X can in principle run on any host, but it is not officially supported. A star (*) denotes license issues (January 2009).

Kind et al. Journal of Cheminformatics 2009 1:18   doi:10.1186/1758-2946-1-18