Oracle has announced the release of the virtualization system VirtualBox 7.1 after almost two years since the last significant update. The ready-made installation packages are available for various operating systems including rhel 7/8/9, Fedora 35/36/40, openSUSE 15.3, Ubuntu 20.04/22.04/24.04, Debian 10/11/12, MacOS, and Windows.
The main changes in VirtualBox 7.1 include:
- The graphical interface has been modernized, offering modes for ordinary and advanced users with some advanced functions hidden in the ordinary mode. The GUI has been updated to a new version of the Qt library.
- A new engine for broadcasting addresses (NAT) has been added, supporting IPV6.
- For guest and host systems based on Linux, the addition of the Wayland Protocol now allows for the use of a shared clipboard in the graphical environment.
- There is initial support for file transfer through the shared clipboard in joint exchange mode for Linux and Windows platforms.
- Virtual machines using EFI now use new Microsoft DB/Kex certificates.
- Integration with OCI now includes functions for cloning and resetting virtual machine instances, as well as resource consumption data for local virtual machines displayed in the information panel.
- VRDE (Virtual Remote Desktop Extension) has been expanded to allow remote connections using the RDP protocol, with support for self-signed certificates for TLS if a user doesn’t provide their own certificate.
- In MacOS host environments with ARM-based processors, virtualization extensions are now available for starting virtual machines with Linux and BSD systems.
- Enhancements have been made to screen recording functions, significantly increasing video encoding performance.
- Bug fixes have been implemented to address issues with FreeBSD 12.3 and PFSENSE 2.6.0.
- Support for installers based on Subiquity and Cloud-Init has been added in automatic installation mode, with the option to specify separate passwords for user and administrator accounts.
- Additional commands have been added to Vboxmanage, including the new “Mount” command for finding the mounting points of guest systems.
- The API for writing binds using Python 2.x is now considered outdated, with a focus on improving compatibility with Python 3.X branch in Vboxshell.
/Reports, release notes, official announcements.