VirtualBox is a powerful x86 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). See "About VirtualBox" for an introduction.
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:
• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
• Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
VirtualBox 4.1.10 (released 2012-03-13)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:
GUI: if 3D support on the host is not available for some reason, do not only disable this VM setting but also uncheck the checkbox
VMM: fixed a potential problem causing to schedule interrupts during SYSEXIT right after STI
VMM: fixed a potential guest memory corruption issue with page fusion
VMM: adjusted the module matching algorithm for page fusion a little, generally resulting in slightly more shared pages
Main: host interfaces no longer have "defaults" for IP address and network mask attributes
Main: don't depend on a password for certain guest control operations (bug #10030)
3D Support: fixed Windows XP hosts support (4.1.8 regression; bugs #10071 and #10088)
3D Support: rendering fixes for Linux hosts with NVIDIA graphics
3D Support: fixed saved state issues (4.1.8 regression; bug #10126)
3D Support: WDDM driver: fixed powershell_ise crashes (bug #10167), make WPF-based apps work with Aero enabled, fixed additional possible WinSAT crashes
VRDP: fixed remote clipboard compatibility issues with some clients
Storage: fixed a possible data corruption when compacting VDI or VHD images with snapshots (32-bit hosts only)
iSCSI: fixed crash when using incorrect credentials when authenticating with a LIO target (bug #10173)
Serial: don't abort in host mode under rare error conditions (non-Windows hosts only)
SDK: actually ship current C bindings
SDK: fixed the Java glue code for JDK 1.7.0 (bug #9848)
SDK: added Python example
Metrics: make metrics collection more robust regarding blocked VMs
Web service: added SSL/TLS support
VBoxShell: fixed Guest Additions information lookup
Solaris installer: fixed dependency checking while installing VirtualBox in a zone
Linux hosts/guests: Linux 3.3-rc1 compile fixes
Solaris hosts: fixed debug kernel panics while opening module CTF data (bug #9651)
Mac OS X hosts: fixed Python support on Lion
Linux Additions: make 3D passthrough work on OL/RHEL 6.2 (bug #10010)
Linux Additions: fixed missing implementation when copying shared folder data through kernel high memory (bug #9878)
Linux Additions: make sure all data is written when closing a memory mapped file on a shared folder
Linux Additions: added support for X.Org Server 1.12
Solaris Additions: fixed guest kernel driver to load properly on guest reboot (4.1.8 regression; bug #10113)
Solaris Additions: fixed missing 64-bit OpenGL library VBoxOGL.so (bug #10151)
Solaris Additions: fixed VBoxService import and start for Solaris 11 guests.
Windows Additions: some Windows 8 adaptions
Windows Additions: several fixes for shared folders (bug #9753)
Guest control: miscellaneous bugfixes
Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, and OpenBSD.
VirtualBox is being actively developed with frequent releases and has an ever growing list of features, supported guest operating systems and platforms it runs on. VirtualBox is a community effort backed by a dedicated company: everyone is encouraged to contribute while Sun ensures the product always meets professional quality criteria.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:
• Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don't have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.
• Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.
• Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).
• Shared folders. Like many other virtualization solutions, for easy data exchange between hosts and guests, VirtualBox allows for declaring certain host directories as "shared folders", which can then be accessed from within virtual machines.
VirtualBox 4.1.10 (released 2012-03-13)
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:
GUI: if 3D support on the host is not available for some reason, do not only disable this VM setting but also uncheck the checkbox
VMM: fixed a potential problem causing to schedule interrupts during SYSEXIT right after STI
VMM: fixed a potential guest memory corruption issue with page fusion
VMM: adjusted the module matching algorithm for page fusion a little, generally resulting in slightly more shared pages
Main: host interfaces no longer have "defaults" for IP address and network mask attributes
Main: don't depend on a password for certain guest control operations (bug #10030)
3D Support: fixed Windows XP hosts support (4.1.8 regression; bugs #10071 and #10088)
3D Support: rendering fixes for Linux hosts with NVIDIA graphics
3D Support: fixed saved state issues (4.1.8 regression; bug #10126)
3D Support: WDDM driver: fixed powershell_ise crashes (bug #10167), make WPF-based apps work with Aero enabled, fixed additional possible WinSAT crashes
VRDP: fixed remote clipboard compatibility issues with some clients
Storage: fixed a possible data corruption when compacting VDI or VHD images with snapshots (32-bit hosts only)
iSCSI: fixed crash when using incorrect credentials when authenticating with a LIO target (bug #10173)
Serial: don't abort in host mode under rare error conditions (non-Windows hosts only)
SDK: actually ship current C bindings
SDK: fixed the Java glue code for JDK 1.7.0 (bug #9848)
SDK: added Python example
Metrics: make metrics collection more robust regarding blocked VMs
Web service: added SSL/TLS support
VBoxShell: fixed Guest Additions information lookup
Solaris installer: fixed dependency checking while installing VirtualBox in a zone
Linux hosts/guests: Linux 3.3-rc1 compile fixes
Solaris hosts: fixed debug kernel panics while opening module CTF data (bug #9651)
Mac OS X hosts: fixed Python support on Lion
Linux Additions: make 3D passthrough work on OL/RHEL 6.2 (bug #10010)
Linux Additions: fixed missing implementation when copying shared folder data through kernel high memory (bug #9878)
Linux Additions: make sure all data is written when closing a memory mapped file on a shared folder
Linux Additions: added support for X.Org Server 1.12
Solaris Additions: fixed guest kernel driver to load properly on guest reboot (4.1.8 regression; bug #10113)
Solaris Additions: fixed missing 64-bit OpenGL library VBoxOGL.so (bug #10151)
Solaris Additions: fixed VBoxService import and start for Solaris 11 guests.
Windows Additions: some Windows 8 adaptions
Windows Additions: several fixes for shared folders (bug #9753)
Guest control: miscellaneous bugfixes
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