14 DAY TRIAL // Oracle announced the release and immediate availability of the VirtualBox 5.1.12 maintenance update to the 5.1 stable series of the popular and open-source computer virtualization solution.
VirtualBox 5.1.12 brings a month's worth of bug fixes and improvements that Oracle's engineers responsible for keeping VirtualBox a reliable and stable application implemented since VirtualBox 5.1.10 was announced a month ago.
Here's what's new in VirtualBox 5.1.12
Besides various GUI, E1000, storage, and VMM improvements, VirtualBox 5.1.12 adds a bunch of goodies for Linux users, among which we can mention initial support for the upcoming Linux 4.10 kernel, as well as better support for Linux kernel 4.9 for hosts.
Additionally, there's better support for the Linux 2.6.28 kernel series, which is no longer officially supported, for both Linux hosts and guests, and it looks like the Linux Additions component now warns users about a known bug with older Linux guests.
Among these, there's the long-term supported Debian GNU/Linux 7 "Wheezy" series, which requires users to manually add some patches to get 3D working. Also, VirtualBox now automatically disables asynchronous I/O on Linux 2.6.18 kernels for Linux hosts.
"Automatically disable asynchronous I/O on Linux 2.6.18 kernels as high I/O load may trigger kernel oopses on these kernels if this feature is enabled," read the release notes, which we've attached at the end of the article for your reading pleasure in case you're curious to know what other components received improvements.
In the meantime, you are invited to download the VirtualBox 5.1.12 binaries for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems right now from our website. This is a recommended update for all users running VirtualBox 5.1.10 or a previous maintenance update from the 5.1 stable series.