VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software.

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 and/or added:

  • VBoxManage: Fixed a crash when running 'guestcontrol run' on Windows hosts (bug #22175)
  • Audio: Fixed device switching on Windows hosts (bug #22267)
  • Windows host installer: Fixed multiple installation entries in the 'Add or remove programs' dialog and upgrade issues
  • Linux host: Fixed issue which caused VM Selector process crash due to missing libdl.so and libpthread.so libraries (bug #22193)
  • Linux host: Removed libIDL as a build time dependency when building VirtualBox from source code (bug #21169)
  • Linux guest and host: Added initial support for kernel 6.15 (bug #22420)
  • Linux guest: Added initial support for kernel 6.16-RC0
  • Linux guest and host: Fixed issue with building modules for UEK8 kernel on Oracle Linux 9 distribution
  • RDP: Fixed issue when it was not possible to paste clipboard buffer into a guest over RDP remote session