Ubuntu Unleashed

Sun xVM VirtualBox is an X86 virtualization software package originally developed by German software company innotek GmbH. As such it is an application installed on an existing host operating system; within this application, additional operating systems, each known as a "Guest OS", can be loaded and run, each with its own virtual environment. For example, several Linux distributions can be "guest" hosted on a single virtual machine running Windows XP as the "Host OS"; likewise, XP and Vista can run as "Guest OS" on a machine running Linux as the "Host OS", and so on.

Supported host operating systems include Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Warp (experimental OSE builds), Windows, and Solaris/OpenSolaris.

Supported guest operating systems include FreeBSD, Linux, OpenBSD, OS/2 Warp, Windows and Solaris.

The application was initially offered under a proprietary software license. In January 2007, after several years of development, VirtualBox OSE (Open Source Edition) was released under GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. Currently, there is a proprietary version, VirtualBox, which is free only for personal or evaluation use, subject to the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL) and an Open Source Edition(OSE), VirtualBox OSE, which is free for commercial and private use, subject to Copyleft and other requirements of the GPL license.

Compared with other established commercial virtualization software such as VMware Workstation and Microsoft Virtual PC, VirtualBox lacks some features, but in turn provides others such as running virtual machines remotely over the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), iSCSI support and USB support with remote devices over RDP and also Has Seamless Desktop Integration which no other Virtualization Solution has!

VirtualBox supports Intel's hardware virtualization VT-x and has experimental support for AMD's AMD-V, but does not use either of them by default.

According to a 2007 survey by DesktopLinux.com, VirtualBox is the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops.

• Solaris and Mac OS X host support
• Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
• Guest Additions for Solaris
• A webservice API
  
• SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller (
• Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support
• In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
• GUI: added accessibility support (508)
• GUI: VM session information dialog
• VBoxHeadless: renamed from VBoxVRDP
• VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests
• VMM: many fixes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
• ATA/IDE: better disk geometry compatibility with VMware images
• ATA/IDE: virtualize an AHCI controller
• Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily.
• Network: support PXE booting with NAT
• Network: fixed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for Nexenta guests
• NAT: improved builtin DHCP server (implemented DHCPNAK response)
• NAT: port forwarding stopped when restoring the VM from a saved state
• NAT: make subnet configurable
• XPCOM: moved to libxml2
• XPCOM: fixed VBoxSVC autostart race
• Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation
• USB: fixed problems with USB 2.0 devices
• MacOS X: fixed seamless mode
• MacOS X: better desktop integration, several look'n'feel fixes
• MacOS X: switched to Quartz2D framebuffer
• MacOS X: added support for shared folders
• MacOS X: added support for clipboard integration
• Solaris: added host audio playback support (experimental)
• Solaris: made it possible to run VirtualBox from non-global zones
• Shared Folders: made them work for NT4 guests
• Shared Folders: many bugfixes to improve stability
• Seamless windows: added support for Linux guests
• Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module
• Linux host: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25
• Windows host: support for USB devices has been significantly improved; many additional USB devices now work
• Windows Additions: automatically install AMD PCNet drivers on Vista guests
• Linux additions: several fixes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
• Linux additions: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25

For more help with the installation process in other operating systems, please see the

User Manual