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Oracle VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. See “About VirtualBox” for an introduction.

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) version 2.

VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, 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, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6, 3.x and 4.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD.

VirtualBox 6.0.0 has been released on December 18 2018, and is a major update.

The following major new features were added:

  • Implemented support for exporting a virtual machine to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
  • User interface: greatly improved HiDPI and scaling support, including better detection and per-machine configuration
  • Major rework of user interface with simpler and more powerful application and virtual machine set-up
  • User interface: a new file manager enabling user to control the guest file system and copy files between host and guest.
  • Graphics: major update of 3D graphics support for Windows guests, and VMSVGA 3D graphics device emulation on Linux and Solaris guests
  • Added support for surround speaker setups (as used by Windows 10 Build 1809)
  • Added utility vboximg-mount on Apple hosts to access the content of guest disks on the host
  • Added support for using Hyper-V as the fallback execution core on Windows host, to avoid inability to run VMs at the price of reduced performance

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

  • Execution core: fixed single-stepping in certain circumstances (bug #17316)
  • User interface: video and audio recording can now be separately enabled
  • Audio/Video recording fixes and improvements
  • Audio: better support for attaching and detaching remote desktop connections
  • Serial port emulation fixes
  • Serial ports: allow changing the serial port attachment while a machine is running (bug #6115)
  • Networking: Added a workaround for older guests which do not enable bus mastering for the virtio PCI device
  • Networking: fixed wrong RCODE from DNS AAAA query with –natdnshostresolver1 (bug #18171)
  • iSCSI: In cases where there is no ambiguity, the LUN of an iSCSI target is automatically determined, for targets with non-zero LUNs
  • Transparently resize disk images when merging if possible
  • VBoxManage: support for DHCP options
  • Fixed VNC/RDP (bug 18153)
  • Guest Control: various new interfaces and features (see SDK documentation)
  • Linux hosts: support Linux 4.20 (thank you Larry Finger)
  • Solaris: installer fixes
  • Shared folders: performance improvements
  • Guest Additions: improved shared folder auto-mounting
  • Windows Guest Additions: fix incorrect tablet co-ordinate handling with recent Windows 10 builds
  • Linux Additions: fix for building vboxvideo on EL 7.6 standard kernel, contributed by Robert Conde (bug #18093)
  • Linux guests: support Linux 4.20 (thank you Larry Finger)
  • Linux guests: support VMSVGA in the Linux and X11 Additions
  • MacOS Guest Additions: initial support
  • OS/2 Guest Additions: initial shared folder support
  • BIOS fixes
  • ACPI: Up to four custom ACPI tables can now be configured for a VM
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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.