14 DAY TRIAL // Sun Microsystems announced today the release of their VirtualBox 2.2.0 virtualization software. Bringing a lot of new features and improvements VirtualBox 2.2.0 is a major release, and one of the most anticipated added features is OpenGL 3D acceleration support for Linux guests. Also, this new release allows importing and exporting of OVF (Open Virtualization Format) files and adds a new host-only networking mode. Without further introduction, let's take a look at the new features of VirtualBox 2.2.0:
· OpenGL select/feedback support; · The OpenGL subsystem will close when terminating guest applications; · Performance improvements in high context switching rates through some Hypervisor optimizations; · The memory limit for virtual machines created on 64-bit platforms was raised to 16 GB; · VT-x/AMD-V and USB (OHCI, EHCI) are now enabled by default when creating new virtual machines; · Added the C API (Application Programming Interface); · Mixing VT-x/AMD-V and software virtualization is now possible; · Speed improvements for certain GRUB boot loaders, only on VT-x/AMD-V; · Added a real-mode IOPL fix for DOS guests, only on VT-x; · Improved RDMSR emulation from the TSC MSR; · Added emulation support for RDPMC, preventing Windows guests from crashing while using Kaspersky Antivirus; · VBoxManage can now be used to configure the next server and the boot file; · Added support for fixed-size ESX server images and other VMDK file variants; · If writing a disk image is not possible, the virtual machine will not start; · Decreased CPU utilization for OHCI and EHCI on USB; · E1000 network cards can now properly handle cable disconnects; · Umask settings are not overridden when creating files; · In X11 guests, the guest mouse pointer is shown at the right position when the virtual desktop is bigger than the guest resolution; · Added the xpg4/xcu4 dependency in the guest additions installer, for Solaris guests; · Made the command-line error messages in VBoxManage less cryptic; · The list vms commands default to the compact format in VBoxManage; · VBoxManage permits the creation of all disk image variants that are supported; · Better immutable disk support; · The audio adapter is now enabled by default for new virtual machines; · Create a warning when booting a 64-bit guest if VT-x/AMD-v is not operational; · If the host CPU doesn't support VT-X/AMD-V support for 64-bit guests will be deactivated; · The floppy icon in the status bar was removed; · The build revision is now shown in the about dialog; · Error dialogs were improved; · Unregistering a machine will close the XML settings file.
The following are the bug fixes brought by VirtualBox 2.2.0:
· Fixed a bug in V86 flags that was related to the FreeBSD guest; · Fixed a guru meditation bug that occurred while booting an AsteriskNow Linux virtual machine; · Fixed the PGMPOOLKIND_FREE guru meditation bug; · Fixed a bug that made Windows XP hang while booting; · A bug that slowed down the safe mode booting of Windows Server 2008 VM only on VT-x/AMD-V; · VT-x detection was fixed when BIOSes don't set the lock bit in MSR_IA32_FEATURE_CONTROL; · Fixed truncated FTP downloads in NAT; · Fixed a crash that was caused by blocked UDP packets in NAT; · Fixed upgrading from XML-1.2 settings for IDE hard disk drives; · Several hangs that occurred when the VRDP server was enabled or disabled in runtime were fixed; · The locale is no longer not set in vboxmouse, fixing some issues with Turkish locales; · Fixed a typo when detecting Xorg 1.6 in Linux additions; · The VBoxMouse.sys filter driver is now set to the correct guest pointing device in Windows guests; · Unloading the vboxnetflt module while still being in use was prevented through an improved reference counting; · A bug that produced VBoxSysInfo.sh zombie processes was fixed; · Added fixes for Slackware, Arch Linux and Linux from Scratch installers; · Fixed an issue that spammed the release log if the additions didn't support statistics information in VBoxManage; · Cleaned up the command line processing in VBoxManage; · Fixed a bug related to the status bar text; · When trying to boot a read-only disk image, the correct error message will be displayed; · Virtual machine hangs that occurred while starting 3D acceleration-enabled guests were fixed; · Fixed several PXE boot hangs that occurred while using hardware virtualization;
Download VirtualBox 2.2.0 right now from Softpedia.