| 1 | <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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| 2 | <!DOCTYPE topic
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| 3 | PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Topic//EN" "topic.dtd">
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| 4 | <topic xml:lang="en-us" id="virtintro">
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| 5 | <title>Some Terminology</title>
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| 6 |
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| 7 | <body>
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| 8 | <p>
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| 9 | When dealing with virtualization, and also for understanding the
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| 10 | following chapters of this documentation, it helps to acquaint
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| 11 | oneself with a bit of crucial terminology, especially the
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| 12 | following terms:
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| 13 | </p>
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| 14 | <ul>
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| 15 | <li>
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| 16 | <p><b outputclass="bold">Host operating system (host OS).</b> This is the OS of the physical
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| 17 | computer on which <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> was installed. There are versions of
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| 18 | <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Oracle Solaris hosts.
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| 19 | See <xref href="hostossupport.dita#hostossupport"/>. </p>
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| 20 | <p>Most of the time, this manual discusses all <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"
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| 21 | /> versions together. There may be platform-specific differences which we will point out where appropriate. </p>
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| 22 | </li>
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| 23 | <li>
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| 24 | <p><b outputclass="bold">Guest operating system (guest OS).</b> This is the OS that is running
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| 25 | inside the virtual machine. Theoretically, <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> can run any
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| 26 | x86 OS such as DOS, Windows, OS/2, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. But to achieve near-native performance of the guest
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| 27 | code on your machine, we had to go through a lot of optimizations that are specific to certain OSes. So while
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| 28 | your favorite OS <i>may</i> run as a guest, we officially support and optimize for a select few, which include
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| 29 | the most common OSes. </p>
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| 30 | <p>See <xref href="guestossupport.dita#guestossupport"/>. </p>
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| 31 | </li>
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| 32 | <li>
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| 33 | <p><b outputclass="bold">Virtual machine (VM).</b> This is the special environment that <ph
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| 34 | conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> creates for your guest OS while it is running. In other
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| 35 | words, you run your guest OS <i>in</i> a VM. Normally, a VM is shown as a window on your computer's desktop.
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| 36 | Depending on which of the various frontends of <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> you use,
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| 37 | the VM might be shown in full screen mode or remotely on another computer. </p>
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| 38 | <p>Internally, <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> treats a VM as a set of
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| 39 | parameters that specify its behavior. Some parameters describe hardware settings, such as the amount of memory
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| 40 | and number of CPUs assigned. Other parameters describe the state information, such as whether the VM is
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| 41 | running or saved. </p>
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| 42 | <p>You can view these VM settings in <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/vbox-mgr"/>, in the <b
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| 43 | outputclass="bold">Settings</b> window, and by running the <userinput>VBoxManage</userinput> command. See
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| 44 | <xref href="vboxmanage.dita#vboxmanage"/>. </p>
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| 45 | </li>
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| 46 | <li>
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| 47 | <p><b outputclass="bold">Guest Additions.</b> This refers to special software packages which are
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| 48 | shipped with <ph conkeyref="vbox-conkeyref-phrases/product-name"/> but designed to be installed <i>inside</i>
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| 49 | a VM to improve performance of the guest OS and to add extra features. See <xref
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| 50 | href="guestadditions.dita#guestadditions"/>. </p>
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| 51 | </li>
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| 52 | </ul>
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| 53 | </body>
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| 54 |
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| 55 | </topic>
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