Vista Tutorial - Sun Microsystems Releases xVM VirtualBox 2.0

September 4, 2008

Sun Microsystems today announced a new version of Sun xVM VirtualBox, its high performance, free and open source desktop virtualization software

Users of xVM VirtualBox 2.0 software will now benefit from new support for 64-bit Guest operating systems like Windows Vista and RedHat Enterprise Linux, in addition to all other major host operating systems. The software also offers a new user interface for the Mac platform, improved networking for the Mac OS X and Solaris OS, as well as improved performance, especially on AMD chips.

Full Article: Sun Microsystems Unveils xVM VirtualBox 2.0 and New Enterprise Support Subscription

Download Here: Sun xVM VirtualBox

Download Here: VirtualBox

VirtualBox 2.0.0 (released 2008-09-04)

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

• 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
• New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
• The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
• New-version notifier
• Guest property information interface
• Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
• New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
• Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
• Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
• Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)
• Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests
• Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts
• Support for VHD disk images

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

• VMM: VT-x fixes
• AHCI/SATA: improved performance
• GUI: keyboard fixes
• Linux installer: properly uninstall the package even if unregistering the DKMS module fails
• Linux additions: the guest screen resolution is properly restored
• Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes)
• Shared Folders: fixed guest crash with Windows Media Player 11
• Mac OS X: Ctrl+Left mouse click doesn’t simulate a right mouse click in the guest anymore. Use Hostkey+Left for a right mouse click emulation. (bug #1766)

Holy pre-holy! that was fast indeed!

Say goodbye to VMWare land, kiddies!

VMware is getting quite large (600mb) for the same features Virtualbox does (32mb)

I use Virtualbox for all my Dev projects

I ma still troubleshooting my VT disable on resume from Sleep issue.

Steve, on your system - can you put your *host* to sleep and wake it up without breaking 64bit OS support for guest OSs?

I've been using it for almost a year at work running a FreeBSD and a Debian VM on my XP system. It wirks pretty well (FreeBSD still has hiccups). Glad to see a x64 version show up!! Starting the download now for my home PC ....

Doesnt break here

VBox 2.0.0 is nice but it's a .0 release and shows it. There's a bunch of bugs that range from minor to crash-inducing. OS/2 guest support is totally broken for me, OpenSolaris 64-bit crashes the VM, and installing Vista x64 crashes the host completely.

There's already a few "fixed in 2.0.2" comments in the bug tracker.

You might need IO APIC turned on for x64guests...I had two VM hardlocks and one VM induced host crash so far...Srv08 X64 as a guest is completely broken too

I did do that, since it won't even start without it (Windows specifically says it needs the APIC enabled). It got to the first reboot then just BSOD'd the Vista x64 host. I read around the forums and it's apparently a known problem.

I do have Ubuntu 64-bit running just fine though, and Server 2003 x64, though yeah, they managed to break guest additions on Server 2003 x64/XP64. /sigh