I tried virtualbox a while back and the reason I eventually moved back to vmware is because vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached, which I do for a few of my VM's. VMWare you can do it by setting a preference and closing the window.

It's not a big thing, but I was already established with vmware so I decided it wasn't worth the effort to work around it.

I've also read that vmware is more performant than virtualbox both in general and in terms of hardware accelerated gpu. All 3 of those just pushed me to staying with vmware.

However, I will say, I vastly preferred the UI for virtualbox. I've seen internet fights about it, but for me, virtualbox most definitely has the better UI.

> vbox requires you to hit some API's in order to run a vm detached

Not anymore. You can just launch the box without any GUI with one command line:

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch07.html#vboxheadless

That's good to know, it always seemed strange that they didn't have a simple way of doing it.

assuming detached means without the window: you can also hold down the shift key when clicking the start button and it will run without opening the separate windows.

Setting up VirtualBox without a GUI is a royal pain!

All of the command line parameters are documented, but there are no complete examples of a typical setup. Not too many people bother with it either, so examples online in blog posts are only semi-useful.

I wound up setting one up on a different machine then working through the various commands required to get my config to match my example.