Software Update: VirtualBox 3.0 Beta 1

Sun Microsystems is developing version 3.0 of VirtualBox and released its first beta release on Wednesday. This program can be used to install another operating system in a virtual environment. VirtualBox is available for Windows 2000 and above, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and can handle a variety of guest operating systems.

The software is available in two versions. The full version has additional functionality, such as support for USB ports and the remote display protocol, but is only free for private use and evaluation purposes. This extra functionality is closed source and is therefore missing in the open source version. Major improvements in version 3.0 include support for up to 32 virtual CPUs, the ability to run DirectX 8 and 9 programs, and OpenGL 2.0 support has been added. What else has changed can be found below:

The following major new features were added:

• Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only)
• Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental)
• Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

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

• Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug #3782)
• Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
• Solaris hosts: tighten the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
• VMM: fixed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
• VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
• VMM: fixed 64 bit CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug #3927)
• VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (eg Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
• GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
• GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
• GUI: allow to create/remove one host-only network adapters
• GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (eg OVF import/export)
• GUI: Fixed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
• VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
• Networking: fixed another problem with TX checksum of loading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
• VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug #4080)
• VHD: fixed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
• VBoxManage: fixed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK files giving raw partition access (bug #3510)
• OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility fixes
• Shared Folders: sometimes a file was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug #3785)
• Shared Folders: allow to change file attributes from Linux guests and use the correct file mode when creating files
• Shared Folders: fixed incorrect file timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
• Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time syncronization and guest property lookup
• Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
• Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
• USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams
• NAT: allow to configure socket and internal parameters
• Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now