Wednesday, July 1, 2009

VirtualBox 3.0 released!


Good news! VirtualBox Version 3.0 has been released!
Here is the changelog from the VirtualBox web site:

VirtualBox 3.0.0 (released 2009-06-30)

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

  • Guest SMP with up to 32 virtual CPUs (VT-x and AMD-V only; see chapter 3.7.2.2 of the user manual)
  • Windows guests: ability to use Direct3D 8/9 applications / games (experimental; see chapter 4.8 of the user manual)
  • Support for OpenGL 2.0 for Windows, Linux and Solaris guests

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

  • Solaris hosts: allow suspend/resume on the host when a VM is running (bug #3826)
  • Solaris hosts: loosen the restriction for contiguous physical memory under certain conditions
  • Mac OS X hosts: fixed guest PAE
  • Linux hosts: kernel module compile fixes for 2.6.31 (bug Fixed in SVN (closed)">#4264)
  • VMM: fixed occasional guru meditation when loading a saved state (VT-x only)
  • VMM: eliminated IO-APIC overhead with 32 bits guests (VT-x only, some Intel CPUs don’t support this feature (most do); bug #638)
  • VMM: fixed 64 bits CentOS guest hangs during early boot (AMD-V only; bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#3927)
  • VMM: performance improvements for certain PAE guests (e.g. Linux 2.6.29+ kernels)
  • VMM: some Windows guests detected a completely wrong CPU frequency (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#2227)
  • VMM: fixed hanging and unkillable VM processes (bug fixed in ... (closed)">#4040)
  • VMM: fixed random infrequent guest crashes due to XMM state corruption (Win64 hosts only)
  • VMM: performance improvements for network I/O (VT-x/AMD-V only)
  • GUI: added mini toolbar for fullscreen and seamless mode (Thanks to Huihong Luo)
  • GUI: redesigned settings dialogs
  • GUI: allow to create/remove more than one host-only network adapters (non Windows hosts)
  • GUI: display estimated time for long running operations (e.g. OVF import/export)
  • GUI: fixed rare hangs when open the OVF import/export wizards (bug #4157)
  • 3D support: fixed VM crashes for client applications using incorrect OpenGL states
  • 3D support: fixed memory corruption when querying for supported texture compression formats
  • 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of glDrawRangeElements
  • 3D support: fixed memory leak when using VBOs
  • 3D support: fixed glew library detection
  • 3D support: fixed random textures corruption
  • VRDP: support Windows 7 RDP client
  • Networking: fixed another problem with TX checksum offloading with Linux kernels up to version 2.6.18
  • NAT: fixed “open ports on virtual router 10.0.2.2 - 513, 514” (forum)
  • NAT: allow to configure socket and internal parameters
  • NAT: allow to bind sockets to specific interface
  • PXE boot: significant performance increase (VT-x/AMD-V only)
  • VHD: properly write empty sectors when cloning of VHD images (bug fixed in svn (closed)">#4080)
  • VHD: fixed crash when discarding snapshots of a VHD image
  • VHD: fixed access beyond the block bitmap which could lead to arbitrary crashes
  • VBoxManage: fixed incorrect partition table processing when creating VMDK files giving raw partition access (bug fixed in svn (closed)">#3510)
  • VBoxManage: support cloning to existing image file
  • OVF: several OVF 1.0 compatibility fixes
  • OVF: fixed exporting of disk images when multiple virtual machines are exported at once
  • Virtual mouse device: eliminated micro-movements of the virtual mouse which were confusing some applications (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#3782)
  • Shared Folders: sometimes a file was created using the wrong permissions (2.2.0 regression; bug ... (closed)">#3785)
  • Shared Folders: allow to change file attributes from Linux guests and use the correct file mode when creating files
  • Shared Folders: some content was incorrectly written under certain conditions (bug #1187)
  • Shared Folders: fixed incorrect file timestamps, when using Windows guest on a Linux host (bug #3404)
  • X11 clipboard: fix duplicate end of lines (bug fixed in SVN (closed)">#4270)
  • X11 guests: a number of shared clipboard fixes
  • Linux guests: Guest Additions support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11
  • Linux guests: new daemon vboxadd-service to handle time synchronization and guest property lookup
  • Linux guests: implemented guest properties (OS info, logged in users, basic network information)
  • Windows host installer: VirtualBox Python API can now be installed automatically (requires Python and Win32 Extensions installed)
  • USB: Support for high-speed isochronous endpoints has been added. In addition, read-ahead buffering is performed for input endpoints (currently Linux hosts only). This should allow additional devices to work, notably webcams (bug #242).
  • USB: fixed error handling for some USB dongles
  • Web service: fixed inability to handle NULL pointers for object arguments, which are valid values for a lot of APIs, in both the raw and the object-oriented web service.
  • Web service: object-oriented bindings for JAX-WS did not exhibit interface inheritance correctly, fixed
  • Web service: added support for IDisplay and IGuest interfaces, which were previously unavailable
  • Registration dialog uses Sun Online accounts now
The updated 3D support should be the most exciting for many users. It looks like VirtualBox 3.0, with support for DirectX 8/9 as well as OpenGL 2.0, might become a viable option for computer games running within a Windows Guest OS instance. I might just break out my old copy of Freelancer and give it a try!

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