VirtualBox 3.0.6 (released 2009-09-09)

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.
Some of the features of VirtualBox are:

• 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.

A number of extra features are available with the full VirtualBox release only (see the " Editions" page for details):

• Virtual USB Controllers. VirtualBox implements a virtual USB controller and allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices to your virtual machines without having to install device specific drivers on the host.

• Remote Desktop Protocol. Unlike any other virtualization software, VirtualBox fully supports the standard Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). A virtual machine can act as an RDP server, allowing you to "run" the virtual machine remotely on some thin client that merely displays the RDP data.

• USB over RDP. With this unique feature, a virtual machine that acts as an RDP server can still access arbitrary USB devices that are connected on the RDP client. This way, a powerful server machine can virtualize a lot of thin clients that merely need to display RDP data and have USB devices plugged in.

Update details:
This is a maintenance release. The following items were fixed and/or added:

• VMM: fixed IO-APIC overhead for 32 bits Windows NT, 2000, XP and 2003 guests (AMD-V only; bug #4392)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation under certain circumstances when enabling a disabled device (bug #4510)
• VMM: fixed a Guru meditation when booting certain Arch Linux guests (software virtualization only; bug #2149)
• VMM: fixed hangs with 64 bits Solaris & OpenSolaris guests (bug #2258)
• VMM: fixed decreasing rdtsc values (AMD-V & VT-x only; bug #2869)
• VMM: small Solaris/OpenSolaris performance improvements (VT-x only)
• VMM: cpuid change to correct reported virtual CPU id in Linux
• VMM: NetBSD 5.0.1 CD hangs during boot (VT-x only; bug #3947)
• Solaris hosts: worked around an issue that caused the host to hang (bug #4486)
• Solaris hosts: fixed a rare host system deadlock when using bridged networking
• Solaris hosts: fixed a potential host system deadlock when CPUs were onlined or offlined
• Solaris hosts installer: added missing dependency for UTF-8 package (bug #4899)
• Linux hosts: don't crash on Linux PAE kernels < 2.6.11 (in particular RHEL/CentOS 4); disable VT-x on Linux kernels < 2.6.13 (bug #1842)
• Linux/Solaris hosts: correctly detect keyboards with fewer keys than usual (bug #4799)
• Mac OS X hosts: prevent password dialogs in 32 bits Snow Leopard
• Python WS: fixed issue with certain enumerations constants having wrong values in Python webservices bindings
• Python API: several threading and platform issues fixed
• Python shell: added exportVM command
• Python shell: various improvements and bugfixes
• Python shell: corrected detection of home directory in remote case
• OVF: fixed XML comment handling that could lead to parser errors
• Main: fixed a rare parsing problem with port numbers of USB device filters in machine settings XML
• Main: restrict guest RAM size to 1.5 GB (32 bits Windows hosts only)
• Main: fixed possible hang during guest reboot (bug #3792)
• GUI: fixed rare crash when removing the last disk from the media manager (bug #4795)
• VBoxManage: fixed guestproperty for Mac OS X hosts (bug #3806)
• VBoxManage: fixed setting guest properties with --flags or -flags
• Webservice: fixed a severe memory leak, at least on platforms using XPCOM
• Serial: fixed host mode (Solaris, Linux and Mac OS X hosts; bug #4672)
• VRDP: Remote USB Protocol version 3
• SATA: fixed hangs and BSODs introduced with 3.0.4 (bugs #4695, #4739, #4710)
• SATA: fixed a bug which prevented Windows 7 from detecting more than one hard disk
• SATA/SCSI: fixed rare random guest crashes and hangs
• SCSI: fixed problem with Fedora 11 refusing to boot after kernel update
• iSCSI: fix logging out when the target has dropped the connection, fix negotiation of simparameters, fix command resend when the connection was dropped, fix processing SCSI status for targets which do not use phase collapse
• BIOS: fixed a bug that caused the OS/2 boot manager to fail (2.1.0 regression, bug #3911)
• PulseAudio: don't hang during VM termination if the connection to the server was unexpectedly terminated (bug #3100)
• Mouse: fixed weird mouse behaviour with SMP (Solaris) guests (bug #4538)
• HostOnly Network: fixed failure in CreateHostOnlyNetworkInterface() on Linux (no GUID)
• HostOnly Network: fixed wrong DHCP server startup while hostonly interface bringup on Linux
• HostOnly Network: fixed incorrect factory and default MAC address on Solaris
• HostOnly Network: fixed the problem with listing host-only interfaces on Mac OS X when all physical interfaces are down (bugs #4698, #4790)
• DHCP: fixed a bug in the DHCP server where it allocated one IP address less than the configured range
• E1000: fixed receiving of multicast packets
• E1000: fixed up/down link notification after resuming a VM
• NAT: fixed ethernet address corruptions (bug #4839)
• NAT: fixed hangs, dropped packets and retransmission problems (bug #4343)
• Bridged Network: fixed packet queue issue which might cause DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE BSOD for Windows hosts (bug #4821)
• Windows Additions: fixed a bug in VBoxGINA which prevented selecting the right domain when logging in the first time
• Windows host installer: should now also work on unicode systems (like Korean, bug #3707)
• Windows host installer: check for sufficient disk space
• Shared clipboard: do not send zero-terminated text to X11 guests and hosts (bug #4712)
• Shared clipboard: use a less CPU intensive way of checking for new data on X11 guests and hosts (bug #4092)
• Guest Additions: do not hide the host mouse cursor when restoring a saved state (bug #4700)
• Windows guests: fixed issues with the display of the mouse cursor image (bugs #2603, #2660 and #4817)
• SUSE 11 guests: fixed Guest Additions installation (bug #4506)
• Guest Additions: support Fedora 12 Alpha guests (bugs #4731, #4733 and #4734)

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

 

Does VirtualBox support DirectX/OpenGL? What about Aero in Vista? How far along is their official Windows 7 support?

Weird questions, I know, but I'm trying to ditch my VMware addiction.

 

It can support Windows 7 as a host or guest.

It does not do Aero.

DirectX/OpenGL are very limited.

 

Hmm I wonder if this will let me finally use PPJoy again on my x64 OS.

Its a virtual joystick driver that allowed me to get full analog control with my wiimote on my computer. Without it I was stuck with digital control and thats not good for PC games.

 

Vbox supports Direct3D and Aero. I can run Xplane, Blender, and Photoshop CS4 inside on a virtual machine.

 

It supports Direct3D, but not Aero (as of 3.0.4 - I highly doubt that has changed in a maintenance release). It does not have the Windows Display Driver Module necessary for Aero to run.