When comparing Virtual Box vs VMWare player, the Slant community recommends Virtual Box for most people. In the question“What are the best desktop virtualization solutions?” Virtual Box is ranked 3rd while VMWare player is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Virtual Box is:
It works for Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, and many others.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Compatible with Many Operating Systems
It works for Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD, and many others.
Pro Beginner friendly
A virtual machine can be set up in minutes if a ISO file to load is already available.
Pro Works well and fast for Windows host and Linux guest
Pro Free and open source
Pro Many free images available
Though most are linux flavors at https://virtualboxes.org/
Oracle's virtualbox site has others.
Pro Can do snapshots
Pro A lot of customization
VirtualBox has multiple virtualization options. Each one may be tailored to the guest operating system’s needs. This makes it especially good on virtualizing older systems, such as DOS, obscure distros, etc.
Pro 3D graphic support
Not sure about games but WebGL works ok.
Pro Works well and fast with Windows host and Linux guest
Pro Microsoft VM support
Also supports Microsoft Virtual Server virtual machines or Microsoft Virtual PC virtual machines.
Pro User friendly
Somewhat more user friendly than VirtualBox.
Cons
Con Lacks video performance
Virtualbox has a hard cap of 256MB of video memory. This could make newer operating systems run slower.
Con Minimal CPU customization
You can only enable/disable certain features. You cannot cap the speed of the CPU, which is required to run systems such as Windows 95.
Con Not open source
Which means having to install their intrusive tools manually on guest linux vms.