I can’t get the video to go full-screen in VirtualBox full-screen video for the VM works perfectly in VMWare but I’m sure I will eventually figure it out. And everything just worked after I installed it. Let me tell you, Windows 8.1 runs like a champ in Oracle VirtualBox! Everything is FAST! It was very easy to configure. But I got tired of having to shut down the computer, switch hard drives, then boot it back up again.

I kept my old hard drive around, the one with Mint 18.1 installed on it, in case I ever needed to run Windows.

(I know for sure that version 14 ran well with Mint 18.1.) As I recall, all of them ran well with Mint 18.1. I tried VMWare versions 14, 15, and 16 with the newer versions of Mint none of them ran well. Basically, something in VMWare didn’t interact well with the newer version of Mint, and whenever I ran my Windows VM, it would hang – in fact, it had slowed to a crawl. But when I upgraded to anything newer than 18.1, I had problems with VMWare Workstation Player. Everything ran perfectly when I was running Mint 18.1. I run Windows 8.1 in a virtual machine in my Linux computer. Why did I stick with 18.1 for so long? One reason – VMWare Workstation Player.

I used to run Mint 18.1, but when support ended, I decided to upgrade to the latest version of Mint, which at the time was 20.1. The OS on my main computer is Linux Mint 20.1, with the xfce interface. I have decided to switch from VMWare Workstation Player to Oracle VirtualBox, and here is why.

Vmware vs virtualbox linux