Now available for Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows

Apr 15, 2015 01:15 GMT  ·  By

Oracle announced the immediate availability for download and testing of the second Beta version of its upcoming VirtualBox 5.0 virtualization software, a major release that introduces powerful new features.

According to the release notes, VirtualBox 5.0 Beta 2 now lets users use paravirtualization providers in raw-mode virtual machines, no longer centers encryption passwords in the all-new Encryption tab, and updates rdesktop-vrdp to version 1.8.3.

An issue with Linux kernels smaller than 2.6.13 used in Linux guests by various operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, has been fixed, and several issues with the encryption password prompt have been addressed as well.

A crash that occurred when attempting to restore the 3D state on X11 hosts has been fixed, some of the items from the menu-bar have been reordered, and an old smooth mechanism will now be used for scaling support in the software renderer case.

Support for bigger guest screens with large resolutions has been added

The medium enumeration has been optimized for large differencing trees, the USB controller types for a respective virtual machine will now be displayed in VM's detail pane, and a crash in the drag and drop functionality has been repaired.

In addition to the above, the second Beta version of VirtualBox 5.0 patches several API issues, fixes booting from SCSI CD and DVD media and reading beyond end of disk, and addresses a rare crash that occurred when attempting to start a virtual machine in separate mode.

Support for bigger guest screens with large resolutions, including HiDPI, was implemented as well. There are many other small improvements implemented in this development version of VirtualBox 5.0, so it is recommended to read the entire changelog if you want to know what exactly has been changed.

Download VirtualBox 5.0 Beta 2 for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows right now from Softpedia. Please note that it is not recommended to use a Beta software in production machines.