Oracle, the California-based software manufacturing company, just released VM VirtualBox 6.1.0 today. This is the first major release of the free and open-source hosted hypervisor software since version 6.0 release December of last year.
VirtualBox 6.1.0 includes better integration with the public Oracle Cloud, user-interface improvements, further work on the 3D support introduced in VirtualBox 6.0 and a plethora of other changes.
Oracle is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1, the latest release of the world’s most popular free and open source, cross-platform virtualization software. Further details at the link below! @OracleCloud @OracleLinux https://t.co/HWNgYcCnJd pic.twitter.com/1wPSAQZoCO
— Oracle VirtualBox (@virtualbox) December 11, 2019
Overview of Changes
The most notable changes in VirtualBox 6.1.0 support for Linux 5.4 kernel, enhanced support for nested virtualization, and the capability to import virtual machines from Oracle Cloud.
Other noteworthy changes include:
- Extended support for exporting VMs into Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, thus allowing multiple VM creation without uploading.
- New style 3D support (VMSVGA and VBoxSVGA). Old-style 3D support (VBoxVGA) has been removed
- Experimental support for file transfers (Windows guests/hosts only) has been added to the shared clipboard. However, it’s disabled by default and must be enabled via VBoxManage.
- Runtime now works on hosts with multiple CPUs (limit – 1024).
- Improved file manager and VISO creation dialogs
- VM list in VirtualBox Manager improved. Machine groups now more apparent and VM search functionality was also improved
- Details pain now contains complete information
- Internal medium enumeration routines optimized to reduce load and enhance performance when the user has lots of media registered
- Adding existing media and creating new media once again works via Virtual Media Manage
- More consistent medium selection
- VM CPU load is shown as part of status bar CPU indicator
- Extended and improved Session Information dialog
- Crashes in cloud-related wizards when accessibility functionality enabled
- VM storage settings page adjusted to enhance the usability
- Mouse pointer scaling improved/fixed
- Flickering on Windows hosts fixed
- Additional texture format support on Windows host
- vboximg-mount now available on Linux host, too
- Experimental support for virtio-scsi added for both hard disks and optical drives
- Users can now change hosts audio backend while VM is in a saved state
- Experimental support for file transfers for Linux hosts on Windows guest
- VM crashes on macOS hosts now fixed
- VBoxSDL frontend fixed on Windows hosts
- Fixes for drawing problem in VBoxSVGA included in Windows Guest Additions
- Documentation updated to include supported host operating systems
- EFI codebase updated to support older OS X guests once more
A complete list of changes introduced in the new version is viewable in the changelog.
Conclusion
The amount of the new features, changes, and fixes in the latest release is quite surprising but certainly welcomed by VirtualBox users.
Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.0 is available for Linux, Windows, and macOS. Installation packages for all three platforms are available for download on the official website.
