Download VirtualBox 5.1.0 RC1

Oracle is developing VirtualBox version 5.1 and released the first release candidate a few days ago. 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 several guest operating systems to turn.

In version 5.1 of VirtualBox we find, among other things, new apic implementations that provide various performance improvements, there is improved support for Python 3 and the interface has been switched to Qt5. The complete list of changes so far can be found below.

VirtualBox 5.1 Release Candidate 1

• VMM: fixed flip-flop handling or edge-triggered interrupts.
• VMM: enable X2-APIC for Linux guests by default.
• VMM: many fixes
• GUI: fixed hang on X11 caused by the infinite loop where multi-screen full-screen windows were grabbing keyboard one after another (Qt5 migration regression).
• GUI: fixed X11 Qt5 migration consequences related to multi-screen full-screen support was broken heavily (all heads on the same host-screen, no mini-toolbar).
• GUI: fixed VBox GUI on solaris10.
• GUI: improved keyboard capturing on X11 hosts
• GUI: Fixed broken keyboard support on Windows host with separate UI (Qt5 migration regression)
• GUI: Added medium-type descriptions for the Medium Type Change dialog
• API: when taking a screenshot, don’t save garbage for blanked screen.
• API: on OS X host don’t lose extradata (5.1 Beta 1 regression)
• NAT: correctly parse resolv.conf with multiple separators (5.1 Beta 3 regression)
• VGA: fixed an occasional hang when running Windows guests with 3D enabled
• Audio: enabled new audio code
• NetFlt/Win: NDIS5 bridging driver installation issue resolved.
• VBoxSVC: fixed several memory leaks when handling .dmg images
• Installers: ship VBoxBugReport
• Linux hosts: fixed VERR_VMM_SET_JMP_ABORTED_RESUME Guru Meditations on hosts with Linux 4.6 or later (bug 15439)
• Windows hosts: fixed installing or bridged networking drivers on Windows Servere 2003 and Windows XP
• Windows hosts: properly fall back to NDIS5 on pre-Vista hosts on silent installations
• Solaris hosts: fixed a crash on hosts with certain CPU configurations

VirtualBox 5.1 Beta 3

• GUI: more multi-screen full-screen issues fixed for Windows host (layout change, host-screen reattaching
• GUI: fixing Solaris crash in VM settings dialog, see here
• VMM: Paravirt fixes
• VMM: fixes on Mac OS X
• VMM: I/O APIC fixes and improvements
• VMM: many other fixes
• VMM: fixes for 64-bit Solaris on 32-bit hosts
• ACPI: fixes for passing through the battery information to the guest
• Main: raised the initial values ​​for RAM, VRAM and hard disk size for certain guests
• Main: WinXP guests defaults to E1000 (PRO/1000 T Server), better performance
• E1000: implemented interrupt throttling improving the performance under certain conditions
• Linux hosts: fixed several Qt5 problems when using the .run packages on recent Linux distributions, see here
• Linux installer: remove old VBox kernel modules before installing the new version
• X11 Additions: the drag and drop service of VBoxClient was blocked for 60 seconds during shutdown, see here

VirtualBox 5.1 Beta 2

• GUI: don’t crash when showing the Beta popup message window
• GUI: multi-screen full-screen layout fixed for Windows host (Qt5 regression)
• GUI: don’t allow to start subsequent separate VM instances
• SDK: reduced memory usage in the webservice Java bindings
• Settings: fixed regression with disabling audio
• Settings: fixed regression with saving snapshots (only .vbox file is corrupted needing manual repair, disk images are intact; 5.1 Beta 1 regression)
• Linux installer: Several path fixes for deb/rpm packages for older Linux distributions where we ship our own Qt5 libraries, see here.
• Solaris Additions: added support for X.org 1.18

VirtualBox 5.1 Beta 1

• VMM: new APIC and I/O APIC implementations that result in significantly improved performance in certain situations (for example with networking, bug #15295)
• VMM: added support for Hyper-V paravirtualized debugging of Windows guests
• VMM: emulate even more MMIO and shadow pagetable exits without going back to user mode
• GUI: overall migration to Qt5
• GUI: passive API event listener improving the VM GUI performance and response time
• better support for Python 3
• GUI: the Detach UI action is now a part of the VM Machine menu
• GUI: reworked session information window
• GUI: the new VM wizard now allows to choose the VM location for the VM which is being created
• GUI: various bug fixes and internal cleanup
• Storage: use fallocate or similar if present to speed up creating fixed-sized disk images
• Storage: implemented NVMHCI-compatible storage controller
• EFI: many improvements, for example allow to boot from USB
• OVF: improved handling of signed manifests
• Windows hosts: rework COM proxy (eg bug #8298)
• Linux installers: no longer rely on DKMS for module rebuilding