VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, 7, 8, Windows 10 and Windows 11), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x, 4.x, 5.x and 6.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, OpenBSD, NetBSD and FreeBSD.
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.
VirtualBox 7.1.0 release notes:
This is a major update. The following new features were added:
- GUI: Modernized look and feel, offering a selection between Basic and Experienced user level with reduced or full UI functionality
- OCI Integration: Performance dashboard now shows resource usage for cloud VMs
- OCI Integration: Clone compute instances
- OCI Integration: Reset compute instances
- Oracle VirtualBox Extension Pack: Update to the PUEL license, removing the evaluation option. For evaluation use of the Extension Pack, please download it from the Oracle Software Delivery Cloud
- VRDE: If user does not set up TLS with custom certificates, enable it with self-signed certificate, including issuing a new one before the old one expires
- NAT: New engine with IPv6 support
- macOS/Arm host: Arm virtualization for Linux and BSD VMs
- Linux host and guest: Added Wayland support for Clipboard sharing (bug #20808)
- Shared Clipboard: Added initial support for transferring files on Linux and Windows hosts / guests. This requires the 7.1 Guest Additions to be installed. See User Guide for known limitations
- Screen Recording: Significant performance improvements for the encoding pipeline, resulting in less CPU usage while recording is active. This requires 7.1 Guest Additions to be installed on Windows guests
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
- VMM: Fixed EFLAGS.TF handling for CPUID instructions when Hyper-V is being used (bug #17961)
- virtio-net: Follow up fixes for FreeBSD 12.3 and pfSense 2.6.0 (bug #21201)
- EFI: Ability to add new Microsoft DB/KEX certificates to newly created VMs
- Oracle Extension Pack: Fixed shipping the cryptographic support module for full VM encryption
- GUI: Improved overall accessibility
- GUI: Update the version of Qt used
- Unattended Installation: Added support for subiquity- / cloud-init-based installers; this enables installing more modern Linux-based guest OSes in Unattended mode
- Unattended Installation: Added support for specifying separate passwords for the user and admin / root accounts
- VBoxManage: Added ability to show and (re-)attach to a (video) recording progress of a VM
- VBoxManage: Added the ability to query the guest"s mount points via a new "mount" Guest Control sub command. Requires at least 7.1 Guest Additions
- Python: Our API bindings for Python 2.x is now marked as being deprecated and will be removed in a future version. Please upgrade your code to use Python 3
- VBoxShell: Lots of smaller and bigger bugfixes + Python 3.x compatibility
Download: VirtualBox 7.1.0 | 106.0 MB (Open Source)
Download: VirtualBox 7.1.0 Extension Pack | 21.8 MB
View: VirtualBox Home Page | VirtualBox Screenshot
