Sun released VirtualBox 2.1.0 today. In addition to bugfixes, new features include:
- Support for hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V) on Mac OS X hosts
- Support for 64-bit guests on 32-bit host operating systems (experimental; see user manual, chapter 1.6, 64-bit guests, page 16)
- Added support for Intel Nehalem virtualization enhancements (EPT and VPID; see user manual, chapter 1.2, Software vs. hardware virtualization (VT-x and AMD-V), page 10))
- Experimental 3D acceleration via OpenGL (see user manual, chapter 4.8, Hardware 3D acceleration (OpenGL), page 66)
- Experimental LsiLogic and BusLogic SCSI controllers (see user manual, chapter 5.1, Hard disk controllers: IDE, SATA (AHCI), SCSI, page 70)
- Full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots (see user manual, chapter 5.2, Disk image files (VDI, VMDK, VHD), page 72)
- New NAT engine with significantly better performance, reliability and ICMP echo (ping) support (bugs #1046, #2438, #2223, #1247)
- New Host Interface Networking implementations for Windows and Linux hosts with easier setup (replaces TUN/TAP on Linux and manual bridging on Windows)
Downloads for Solaris, OpenSolaris, Linux, OS X and Windows are available here.
I just realized that it is a new package (virtualbox-2.1), so you won’t be upgraded automatically if you’ve got the virtualbox repo enabled with virtualbox-2.0 installed. You’ll have to manually install virtualbox-2.1. Also, if using the repo, don’t forget to install dkms so that kernel modules can be reconfigured every time you update vbox!
Cool. When will sun be putting USB passthrough into the FOSS version?
@foo: That I don’t know, but I do know from working on OpenSolaris how long it can take to free up licence-encumbered code, so it could be a little while yet even if they’re already working on it. I’m afraid I’m not privy to their product roadmap, though…