Oracle VirtualBox 5.1

[Arthur]

Download / Changelog

 

This is a major update. The following major new features were added:

 

• VMM: new APIC and I/O APIC implementations that result in significantly improved performance in certain situations (for example with networking, bug #15295)
  
• VMM: added support for Hyper-V paravirtualized debugging of Windows guests
  
• VMM: emulate even more MMIO and shadow pagetable exits without going back to user mode
  
• GUI: overall migration to Qt5 (bug #11775)
  
• GUI: passive API event listener improving the VM GUI performance and response time
  
• Audio: added HDA (High Definition Audio) support for newer Linux guests
  
• Audio: added on-demand timers which should improve the overall performance and reduce the CPU consumption
  
• Audio: more fine-grained volume control for the AC'97 emulation, which now also takes the master volume control into account
  
• Better support for Python 3
  

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

 

• VMM: activate the x2APIC by default for Linux guests
  
• VMM: many more fixes
  
• GUI: the Detach UI action is now a part of the VM Machine menu
  
• GUI: reworked session information window
  
• GUI: the new VM wizard now allows to choose the VM location for the VM which is being created
  
• GUI: fixed location of touch events in unscaled HiDPI mode (bugs #14366, #14367)
  
• GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup
  
• Storage: use fallocate() or similar if present to speed up creating fixed-sized disk images (bug #5967)
  
• Storage: implemented NVMHCI-compatible storage controller
  
• Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements
  
• E1000: implemented interrupt throttling for performance improvements
  
• EFI: many improvements, for example allow to boot from USB
  
• OVF: improved handling of signed manifests
  
• API: Windows XP guests and Windows 2003 server guests now default to the E1000 T Server network card
  
• VBoxSVC: fixed several memory leaks when handling .dmg images
  
• Installers: ship VBoxBugReport
  
• Windows hosts: reworked COM proxy (e.g. bug #8298)
  
• Linux installers: no longer rely on DKMS for module rebuilding
  
• Linux Additions: fix a problem when updating the initramfs after the guest modules are compiled (bug #15579)
  
• Linux Additions: try to fix a problem where the OpenGL libraries where loaded by the X server when we only support X clients (bug #15574)
  

[Arthur]

VirtualBox 5.2 has been released. Use download link above to download.

 

This is a major update. The following major new features were added:

 

• VM export to Oracle Cloud (OPC)
  
• Unattended guest installation (bug #5810; see the manual for more information)
  
• Overhauled VM selector GUI (improved tools VM / global tools handling, new icons)
  
• Added experimental audio support for video recording
  

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

 

• VMM: fixed reason for recent Linux kernels on also recent CPU models warning about "XSAVE consistency problem"
  
• GUI: Virtual Media Manager rework allowing to manage media attributes, like size, location, type and description
  
• GUI: Host-only Network Manager implemented to simplify managing corresponding networks and their attributes
  
• GUI: Snapshot Pane rework allowing to manage snapshot attributes, like name and description; reworked snapshot details which looks more clear, corresponds to VM Details pane and reflects current VM state difference according to last snapshot taken
  
• GUI: Audio settings extended with possibility to enable/disable audio input/output; corresponding changed were done to Audio and Video Capture settings pages; VM Devices menu and status-bar extended with corresponding actions and indicator as well
  
• GUI: improvements with accessibility support
  
• GUI: Fixed double mouse cursor when using mouse integration without Guest Additions, actually a Qt 5.6 bug fixed with QT 5.6.3 (Mac OS X hosts only; bug #15610)
  
• Audio: implemented (optional) device enumeration support for audio backends
  
• Audio: implemented support for host device callbacks (e.g. when adding or removing an audio device)
  
• Audio: HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads
  
• Audio: implemented ability to enable or disable audio input / output on-the-fly
  
• Storage: implemented support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks
  
• Storage: implemented support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe
  
• Storage: first milestone of the I/O stack redesign landed
  
• E1000: Fix for Windows XP freeze when booting with unplugged cable
  
• NAT network: do not skip some port forwarding setup when multiple VMs are active (Windows hosts only; bug #17041)
  
• Serial: fixed extremely rare misbehavior on VM poweroff
  
• EFI: better video mode handling, supporting custom video modes and easier configuration (bug #6783)
  
• BIOS: properly report floppy logical sectors per track for unusual formats
  
• BIOS: update ATA disk parameter table vectors only if there is actually a corresponding ATA disk attached
  
• PXE: speed up booting by better handling pending packets when the link is not up yet
  
• VBoxManage: handle CPUID sub-leaf overrides better
  
• Windows Additions: fix several 3D related crashes
  
• Solaris hosts: allow increasing MTU size for host-only adapter to 9706 bytes to support jumbo frames
  
• Linux Additions: on systems using systemd, make sure that only the Guest Additions timesync service is active
  
• many unlisted fixes and improvements