VirtualBox 7.0.6 Build 155176 by Oracle
VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional quality virtualization solution. It is also Open Source Software. The powerful virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.
VirtualBox provides are useful for several scenarios: Running multiple operating systems simultaneously. VirtualBox allows you to run more than one operating system at a time.
This way, you can run software written for one operating system on another (for example, Windows software on Linux or a Mac) without having to reboot to use it.
Since you can configure what kinds of “virtual” hardware should be presented to each such operating system, you can install an old operating system such as DOS or OS/2 even if your real computer’s hardware is no longer supported by that operating system.
Software vendors can use virtual machines to ship entire software configurations. For example, installing a complete mail server solution on a real machine can be a tedious task.
With VirtualBox, such a complex setup (then often called an “appliance”) can be packed into a virtual machine. Installing and running a mail server becomes as easy as importing such an appliance into VirtualBox.
In order to run VirtualBox on your machine, you need:
- Reasonably powerful x86 hardware. Any recent Intel or AMD processor should do.
- Memory. Depending on what guest operating systems you want to run, you will need at least 512 MB of RAM (but probably more, and the more the better). Basically, you will need whatever your host operating system needs to run comfortably. Plus the amount that the guest operating system needs. So, if you want to run Windows 8.1 on Windows 7, you probably won’t enjoy the experience much with less than 2 GB of RAM. Check the minimum RAM requirements of the guest operating system, they often will refuse to install if it is given less. Sometimes it malfunctions instead. So you’ll need that for the guest alone, plus the memory your operating system normally needs.
- Hard disk space. While VirtualBox itself is very lean (a typical installation will only need about 30 MB of hard disk space), the virtual machines will require fairly huge files on disk to represent their own hard disk storage. So, to install Windows 8, for example, you will need a file that will easily grow to several 10 GB in size.
- A supported host operating system. Presently, we support Windows, many Linux distributions, Mac OS X, Solaris and OpenSolaris. Check the user manual of the VirtualBox version you are using which versions are supported.
- A supported guest operating system. Besides the user manual (see below), up-to-date information is available at “Status: Guest OSes“.
Changes in VirtualBox 7.0.6 (2023-01-17):
- VMM: Fixed guru running the FreeBSD loader on older Intel CPUs without unrestricted guest support (bug #21332)
- GUI: Fixed virtual machines grouping when VM was created or modified in command line (bugs #11500, #20933)
- GUI: Introduced generic changes in settings dialogs
- VirtioNet: Fixed broken network after loading saved state (bug #21172)
- Storage: Added support for increasing the size of the following VMDK image variants: monolithicFlat, monolithicSparse, twoGbMaxExtentSparse, twoGbMaxExtentFlat
- VBoxManage: Added missing –directory switch for guestcontrol mktemp command
- Mouse Integration: Guest was provided with extended host mouse state (bug #21139)
- DnD: Introduced generic improvements
- Guest Control: Fixed handling creation mode for temporary directories (bug #21394)
- Linux Host and Guest: Added initial support for building UEK7 kernel on Oracle Linux 8
- Linux Host and Guest: Added initial support for RHEL 9.1 kernel
- Windows Host: Fixed support for VM autostart (bug#21349)
- Linux Guest Additions: Added initial support for kernel 6.2 for vboxvideo
- Audio: The “–audio” option in VBoxManage is now marked as deprecated; please use “–audio-driver” and “–audio-enabled” instead. This will allow more flexibility when changing the driver and/or controlling the audio functionality
Changes in VirtualBox 7.0.4 (2022-11-18):
- VMM: Added nested paging support for nested virtualization (Intel hosts only)
- VMM: Fixed rare guru meditations with certain guests on macOS 10.15 (Catalina)
- VMM: Fixed possible VM process crash on Windows hosts when Hyper-V is used with certain guests
- VMM: Fixed Windows XP guest hang or BSOD on AMD CPUs under certain circumstances
- GUI: Various bugfixes for the Guest Control file manager
- GUI: Added more informative file operations in the Guest Control file manager
- GUI: Added an option to the global settings (the display page) to resize user interface font
- GUI: Fixed a regression in new vm wizard. Selected virtual disks are no longer deleted when the wizard is cancelled
- GUI: Added a new menu item to the devices menu to optionally upgrade the guest additions.
- VirtioSCSI: Fixed recognition of the virtio SCSI controller by the EFI firmware
- VirtioSCSI: Fixed hang when shutting down the VM if the virtio SCSI controller is used
- virtio-net: Workaround a bug in the virtio-net driver included in FreeBSD version up to 12.3 which renders the device non functional
- Storage: Fixed I/O errors with the VirtioSCSI controller when the host I/O cache is enabled
- VBoxManage: Fixed regression when ‘createmedium disk –variant RawDisk’ command resulted in invalid .vmdk file
- Main: Restored input pointing device behavior in multi-monitor VM configuration (bug #21137)
- Main: Fixed progress indication during automatic Linux Guest Additions installation
- Guest Control: Fixed path handling issues
- 3D: Fixed VM process crash on macOS with 3D enabled
- Linux Host and Guest: General improvements in startup scripts
- Linux Guest Additions: Introduced initial support for RHEL 8.7 and 9.2 kernels
- Linux Guest Additions: Introduced initial support for SLES 15.4 kernels
- Linux Guest Additions: Fixed kernel modules rebuild behavior on system shutdown
Homepage – https://www.virtualbox.org
Currently, Oracle VM VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems:
- Windows hosts (64-bit):
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 10
- Windows 11 21H2
- Windows Server 2012
- Windows Server 2012 R2
- Windows Server 2016
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
- Mac OS X hosts (64-bit):
- 10.15 (Catalina)
- 11 (Big Sur)
- 12 (Monterey)
Intel hardware is required.
- Linux hosts (64-bit). Includes the following:
- Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS and 22.04
- Debian GNU/Linux 10 (“Buster”) and 11 (“Bullseye”)
- Oracle Linux 7, 8 and 9
- CentOS/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8 and 9
- Fedora 35 and 36
- Gentoo Linux
- SUSE Linux Enterprise server 12 and 15
- openSUSE Leap 15.3
Size: 105 MB