Download VirtualBox 4.3.0 Beta 1

Oracle has released the first beta release of version 4.3 of VirtualBox. 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, OS X, Linux, and Solaris, and is capable of many guest operating systems to turn.

In version 4.3 of VirtualBox, among other things, the complete virtualization code has been rewritten, which has fixed several problems and also shows several performance improvements. There is also video capture and support for ipv6, and several virtual machines running on the same computer can now communicate with each other via the internal network. The full changelog for this release is below.

This is a major update. The following major new features were added:

• VMM: major rewrite of the VT-x code including many bug fixes and performance improvements (for example bug #9659)
• GUI: keyboard shortcuts management (input page of global preferences extended with possibility to edit general keyboard shortcuts for VirtualBox Manager and Virtual Machine)
• GUI: extended messaging mechanism (new non-modal popup overlays used to show noncritical warnings and provide user with additional information)
• GUI: video capturing support (bug #4766)
• GUI: host touch devices support (GUI passes host touch events to guest)
• Emulated USB touch devices
• VRDP: support for IPv6
• NAT: experimental virtual router mode: several VMs are attached to the same internal network and share one NAT service (see chapter 6.4, Network Address Translation Service (experimental), page 95)

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

• VMM: properly handle NMIs on Linux hosts with X2APIC enabled
• GUI: update check uses https
• GUI: lot of internal stuff rewritten (cleanup and bug fixes)
• Settings: global and per-VM default frontend configuration, useful to select the use of alternative VM frontends
• Settings: limit depth of snapshot tree to 250 levels, as more will lead to decreased performance and may trigger crashes
• Main: new event queue implementation which does not use the host’s native event queue for processing VirtualBox events anymore
• Main: use the XDG standard configuration folder instead of .VirtualBox on systems where it is appropriate (bug #5099)
• VBoxManage: list more information about hard disk/DVD/floppy media, and support the –long option to show really all available details
• VBoxManage: added support for optional command line parameters for the automatic Guest Additions update
• VBoxManage: added support for listing active guest sessions, guest processes and/or guest files via guestcontrol list
• VBoxManage: added support for closing active guest sessions via guestcontrol session close –session-id| –session-name|–all
• VBoxManage: added support for terminating active guest processes via guestcontrol process kill|close|terminate –session-id| –session-name … or guestcontrol [p[s]]kill –session-id| –session-name …
• VBoxManage: added support for watching guest sessions via guestcontrol watch
• 3D support: several fixes
• 3D support: several fixes for Mac OS X hosts
• OVF: several fixes
• Keyboard: fix for reporting key sequences like Ctrl+Alt+Del for the USB keyboard emulation
• Shared Clipboard/X11: support for BMP-format images, contributed by François Revol
• Windows hosts: don’t cause massive DPC latency (bug #6242)
• Windows hosts: consider symlinks when retrieving volume information (bug #11962)
• Windows Additions: fixed misbehavior with guest display power management (WDDM driver only; bug #11170)
• Windows guests: ability to track guest user idle times through the newly introduced event IGuestUserStateChangedEvent