virtualbox in text-only mode (for a better Accessibility of old guest systems, especially when using a Braille display on the host)

[dave090679]

Hi guys,

When setting up older (or text-only) guest operating systems like freedos or freebsd, it would be very helpful to have some slimline text-only frontend, which would even display the vm's bios, Efi or Boot Menu.

When working with my Pc, I'm using a braille display <​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refreshable_braille_display>. in Windows 10, The Braille display is driven by NVDA <​http://www.nvda-project.org>. on Linux, it is driven by Brltty <​https://brltty.app/index.html> and Orca <​https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orca_(assistive_technology)>.

A text-based frontend for virtualbox would have some Advantages:

At first, it would be much much more accessible to install text-based operating systems like freedos or freebsd or older linux Distros. With such a frontend, it would even be possible to control the vm's Bios or the boot menu in an accessible way.

In practice, I imagine an alternative frontend for Virtualbox which should be called like this:

vboxmanage startvm freedos --type textonly

During bootup, all messages should be written directly to the text console. If the Vm has to switch into a graphic mode, it can write something like "1024x768 Graphics oe" to the text console.

I think a text-only frontend would close a very big gap in the Accessibility of virtualbox (especially when using a braille display).

greetings

Dave