Download VirtualBox 4.1.0

Only a few days after the release of version 4.0.12 of VirtualBox, Oracle now also offers version 4.1.0. VirtualBox can be used to install other operating systems in a virtual environment on a computer. In this way it is possible to use different operating systems on the same hardware side by side and at the same time. VirtualBox is available for Windows XP and above, Mac OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and is capable of many guest operating systems to turn.

VirtualBox is available in two separate 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. The extra functionality is closed source and is therefore not present in the open source version. It may, however, be used in commercial environments, provided you install it yourself on the PC. New in version 4.0 is, among other things, that the program is now offered as a basic package and that it contains extra functionality in separate extension packs. The following changes and improvements have been made in this update:

The following major new features were added:

• Support for cloning of VMs (bug #5853see the manual for more information): full clones can be created through the GUI and VBoxManage, linked clones only through VBoxManage
• GUI: enhanced wizard for creating new virtual disks
• GUI: new wizard for copying virtual disks
• GUI: keep the aspect ratio in scale mode (Windows and OSX hosts only; bug #7822)
• VMM: raised the memory limit for 64-bit hosts to 1TB
• Experimental support for PCI passthrough for Linux hosts, see the manual for more information
• Windows guests: Experimental WDDM graphics driver, supporting Windows Aero (bug #4607) and providing Direct3D support using a cleaner approach (no need to install the guest drivers in Safe Mode anymore)
• Guest Additions: status of modules and features can now be queried separately by the frontends
• Networking: new network attachment mode “Generic Driver”, which offers an open plugin architecture for arbitrary and separately distributable virtual network implementations
• Host-only Networking: fixed host crash in kernels prior to 2.6.29
• New Networking Mode UDP Tunnel: allows to interconnect VMs running on different hosts easily and transparently, see the manual for more information
• Experimental support for SATA hard disk hotplugging available with VBoxManage
• Solaris hosts: New Crossbow based bridged networking driver for Solaris 11 build 159 and above

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

• VMM: more SMP timer fixes
• VMM: fixed sporadic recompiler crashes with SMP guests
• VMM: many small fixes
• GUI: when reverting to a snapshot, ask for taking a snapshot of the current state
• GUI: added a View menu
• GUI: added a setting for the promiscuous mode policy for internal networks, bridged networks and host-only networks
• GUI: added slider for setting the CPU execution cap allowing to limit the amount of CPU time spent for the execution of the guest, see the manual for more information.
• GUI: the VM description is editable during the runtime of a VM (bug #1551)
• GUI: added proxy settings (bug #2870)
• GUI: made the number of SATA ports configurable
• GUI: decrease time before showing the VM configuration dialog
• VBoxManage: more convenient configuration of storage controller attachments by automatically determining the port or device parameter when a storage controller has only one port or device per port
• VBoxManage: changed syntax of the guestcontrol command group, fixed various bugs, removed obsolete options
• VBoxBalloonCtrl: new service for automatic dynamic adjustment of the balloon size for running VMs
• Settings: machine names and snapshot names are not allowed to be a valid UUID
• Settings: provide better diagnostics if a single medium is used twice in a VM configuration
• Settings: provide better diagnostics for errors in medium create/merge/clone operations, and fix memory leaks in error cases
• Storage: ATA/SATA drives can be marked as non-rotational, ie the guest OS will detect them as a SSD if supported, which can improve performance
• Storage: virtual CD/DVD images will be detached if the guest ejects the medium, unless the drive is marked to handle ejects only on a temporary basis
• Storage: the medium UUID can be changed again when attaching a medium for the first time, which allows using images which are exact duplicates including the UUID
• Storage: fixed possible data corruption under certain circumstances with VHD and Parallels images (bug #9150)
• Storage: fixed unnecessary expansion when cloning differential images in VDI format
• Storage: fixed detection code to handle empty files for VDI and VMDK format
• Storage: fixed access to CD/DVD images beyond 4GB when using the SATA controller (bug #8592)
• Floppy: several bugs have been fixed
• Floppy: make it possible to unmount a host floppy disk (bug #6651)
• BIOS: disk-related structures are now checksummed correctly (bug #8739)
• USB: many fixes for the Windows USB host driver
• NAT: reduced memory footprint
• Networking: fixed the problem with segmentation offloading when several VMs are transmitting in parallel
• Networking: workaround for a bug in wireshark when operating directly on a capture file created by VirtualBox
• Serial: announce the serial devices in the ACPI tables to make Windows guests find the virtual hardware (bug #7411)
• VRDP: support for TLS connections (see the manual for more information)
• VRDP: support for multimonitor client configurations with MS RDP clients
• VRDP: fixed a rare screen corruption
• 3D support: fixed GL_VERSION string for different locales (bug #8916)
• Webservice: fixed timeout handling with HTTP 1.1 keepalive, and be more robust when connections fail
• VBoxSVC: fixed regression when several clients trigger autostart simultaneously
• Main: fixed incorrect handling of the medium location for media which are not file based (eg iSCSI), which resulted in confusing location values ​​in many places
• JAX-WS client bindings: fixed resource leak
• Sources: fixed USB 2.0 support using extension packs for non-official builds
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed non-VT-x mode on Lion hosts
• Windows hosts: fixed copy’n’paste in the GUI and for the VM window (bug #4491)
• Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled removing of all mediums when removing a VM
• Windows hosts (64-bit only): enabled live snapshot deletion
• Windows hosts: use native controls in the installer (bug #5520)
• Solaris hosts: fixed preemption issue with Solaris 11 hosts (builds 166 and above)
• Solaris hosts: better control of USB device access on Solaris 11 hosts
• Guest Additions: improved driver installation on Windows guests
• Guest Additions: fixed high CPU usage while executing guest programs from the host
• Solaris Additions: fixed automounting or shared folders (bug #8014)

VirtualBox 4.0.0 screenshot, click on the image for a larger version.