Dec 7, 2010 14:52 GMT  ·  By

Parallels Inc. have launched a new version of their popular virtualization solution for Mac OS X, Parallels Desktop for Mac. Currently at its sixth major version, the program has undergone a bit of maintenance lately, which resulted in an incremental 6.0.11990 release tasked with addressing stability and performance issues, as well as other bugs.

The first and most important line of text in the changelog reveals that Parallels developers have made a few tweaks to “address stability and performance of Parallels Desktop and virtual machines.”

The update then focuses on resolving various networking issues, as well as to improve the process of converting third party virtual machines.

Some startup issues are also being addressed in this release, alongside an activation issue when upgrading the software to a new version.

Users now gain mouse settings in the Parallels Desktop Preferences, the release notes continue to reveal. Those who’ve had issues when printing from the application should also see some improvements, according to its makers.

Notably, for Linux fans, this version of Parallels Desktop for Mac delivers support for the relatively new Red Hat 6 and Fedora 14 distributions.

The rest of the changes are listed as follows:

· Address issues with unexpected inability to copy and paste between Mac and Windows. · Resolve an issue when a Boot Camp virtual machine requires to reactivate Windows . · Address a mouse handling issue that causes incorrect transitions between SmartMouse modes in 3D applications and games.

Download Parallels Desktop for Mac (Update / Trial / Buy)

In related news, Oracle has issued the first beta of its VM Virtual Box 4.0 software for Mac OS X. Unlike Parallels’ offerings, VirtualBox is a free virtualization solution for personal use.

The update brings new settings/disk file layout for VM portability, support for Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA), a redesigned user interface with guest window preview alongside a new display mode with downscaled guest display, as well as support for more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts. Learn more here.