VirtualBox 3.1 with Improved Management.
Ever since Sun bought the virtualization smith Innotek in 2008, the development of its VirtualBox has taken giant strides.
Although VirtualBox 3.1 is designated a minor release, the changelog shows some important updates in snapshot management apart from numerous bugfixes. The new release also allows migrating a live VM session from host to host.
Sun has been satisfying what looks to be the steady growth of users with almost monthly versions of VirtualBox. Whereas the changes to the last major release 3.0 update were less than spectacular, the current version provides some important and for users quite sensible new features. The snapshot function saw some especially fundamental revisions. Any previous snapshot can now be restored to be the current VM state and new snapshots can be branched from existing ones.
Live migration is a new feature, called teleportation, in VirtualBox that is based more on business requirements. It allows porting a VM session on a running basis from host to host.
Sun also reports a performance improvement for PAE and AMD64 guests in the changelog. Network performance underwent some changes as well. It's now possible to adjust network settings for the VM while it's running and the implemented NAT can act as a DNS proxy.
The free VirtualBox software under a personal use and evaluation license is available for download as packages for Linux distros in addition to Windows and Mac OS X. Sun also provides the source code for VirtualBox OSE, the open source edition under GPLv2 license.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Is This the Year of Linux?
Another major organization has decided to kick Windows and Office to the curb, in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.