VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualization software for x86_64 hardware (with version 7.1 additionally for macOS/Arm and with version 7.2 also for Windows/Arm), targeted at laptop, desktop, server and embedded use.

Features

  • 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, Linux and Solaris. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows, Linux and Solaris 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). There are also guest additions for OS/2 with somewhat reduced functionality.

  • 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.

What's New

This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed or added:

  • VMM: Avoided querying/setting xcr0 for CPUs without xsave feature when using Windows Hyper-V as the virtualization engine
  • Windows installer: Added support for detecting the Visual C++ runtime via the servicing infrastructure (github:gh-723)
  • Windows Host: Fixed clipboard handling of Unicode formats (github:gh-677)
  • Linux Host: Added initial support for kernel 7.2
  • Linux Guest: Fixed support for updated RHEL 9.8 and 9.9 kernels
  • UEFI: Fixed possible bug check and reboot of Windows 11 when updating Secure Boot DBX entries
  • BIOS: Simplified build prerequisites, NASM 2.16 or later is now usable for everything (github:gh-520)

VirtualBox 7.2.12 is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed or added:

  • VMM: Fixed issue when CentOS 10 VM was not booting due to the message "Fatal glibc error: CPU does not support x86-64-v3" (github:gh-642)
  • Devices/EFI: Fixed booting issue when ARM VM had less than 1024 MiB of RAM assigned (github:gh-679)
  • USB: Fixed issue when it was not possible to attach USB device to headless VM on Apple Silicon/macOS 26.4.1 (github:gh-631)
  • Storage: Fixed issue when VIRTIO-SCSI device was not recognized as SSD device by guest system (github:gh-634)
  • Network: Fixed issue in E1000 emulation code which triggered debug log creation (github:gh-645)
  • Network: Fixed issue in E1000 emulation code which prevented OS/2 guest from booting (github:gh-683)
  • Linux Host: Fixed issue when VMs could not be started due to kernel oops (github:gh-639)
  • Linux Host and Guest: Fixed issue when kernel modules were failing to build with openSUSE 16.0 kernel
  • Linux Host and Guest: Added initial support for kernel 7.1
  • Linux Host and Guest: Added extra fixes for RHEL 9.8 kernel (github:gh-676)
  • Linux Host and Guest: Added possibility to build source code using NASM instead of YASM as the assembler (github:gh-520)
  • Linux Guest Additions: Added initial support for Extended Data Control Protocol for clipboard sharing with Plasma on Wayland guests (github:gh-33)
  • Linux Guest Additions: Added extra fixes for preventing vboxvideo kernel module build with kernel version 7.0 and newer (github:gh-655)
  • OS/2 Guest Additions: Fixed issue when Shared Folders automount and clipboard sharing stopped working (github:gh-551)