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LXD

Stacks103

Followers190

+ 1

Votes68

VirtualBox

Stacks29.3K

Followers24K

+ 1

Votes1.1K

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LXD vs VirtualBox: What are the differences?

Developers describe LXD as "Daemon based on liblxc offering a REST API to manage containers". LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network. On the other hand, VirtualBox is detailed as "Run nearly any operating system on a single machine and to freely switch between OS instances running simultaneously". VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

LXD and VirtualBox are primarily classified as "Virtual Machine Platforms & Containers" and "Virtualization Platform" tools respectively.

"More simple" is the top reason why over 4 developers like LXD, while over 357 developers mention "Free" as the leading cause for choosing VirtualBox.

LXD is an open source tool with 2.28K GitHub stars and 531 GitHub forks. Here's a link to LXD's open source repository on GitHub.

Decisions about LXD and VirtualBox

Florian Sager

IT DevOp at Agitos GmbH · Oct 22, 2019 | 2 upvotes · 372.6K views

Chose

LXD

over

Docker

lxd/lxc and Docker aren't congruent so this comparison needs a more detailed look; but in short I can say: the lxd-integrated administration of storage including zfs with its snapshot capabilities as well as the system container (multi-process) approach of lxc vs. the limited single-process container approach of Docker is the main reason I chose lxd over Docker.

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Pros of LXD

Pros of VirtualBox

10
More simple
8
Open Source
8
API
8
Best
7
Cluster
5
Multiprocess isolation (not single)
5
Fast
5
I like the goal of the LXD and found it to work great
4
Full OS isolation
3
Container
3
More stateful than docker
2
Systemctl compatibility

358
Free
231
Easy
169
Default for vagrant
110
Fast
73
Starts quickly
45
Open-source
42
Running in background
41
Simple, yet comprehensive
27
Default for boot2docker
22
Extensive customization
3
Free to use
2
Mouse integration
2
Easy tool
2
Cross-platform

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What is LXD?

LXD isn't a rewrite of LXC, in fact it's building on top of LXC to provide a new, better user experience. Under the hood, LXD uses LXC through liblxc and its Go binding to create and manage the containers. It's basically an alternative to LXC's tools and distribution template system with the added features that come from being controllable over the network.

What is VirtualBox?

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

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Jobs that mention LXD and VirtualBox as a desired skillset

Site Reliability Engineer

San Francisco, CA, US; , CA, US

View Job Details

+18

Site Reliability Engineer

San Francisco, CA, US; , CA, US

View Job Details

+18

Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering - West or Central

LaunchDarkly

- US West

View Job Details

+18

See jobs for LXD

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What companies use LXD?

What companies use VirtualBox?

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What tools integrate with LXD?

What tools integrate with VirtualBox?

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What are some alternatives to LXD and VirtualBox?

Docker

The Docker Platform is the industry-leading container platform for continuous, high-velocity innovation, enabling organizations to seamlessly build and share any application — from legacy to what comes next — and securely run them anywhere

LXC

LXC is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Through a powerful API and simple tools, it lets Linux users easily create and manage system or application containers.

KVM

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V).

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.

containerd

An industry-standard container runtime with an emphasis on simplicity, robustness, and portability

See all alternatives

LXD vs VirtualBox

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Pros of LXD

Pros of VirtualBox

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What is LXD?

What is VirtualBox?

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

What companies use LXD?

What companies use VirtualBox?

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What tools integrate with LXD?

What tools integrate with VirtualBox?

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