VirtualBox v4.0.0 Beta 1 Released

[Alastor]

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use.

http://www.virtualbox.org/
http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=36748

Changes :

Version 4.0.0 will be new major release. The following major new features were added:

* New settings/disk file layout for VM portability; see the manual for more information.
* Open Virtualization Format Archive (OVA) support; see the manual for more information.
* VMM: support more than 1.5/2 GB guest RAM on 32-bit hosts
* Language bindings: uniform Java bindings for both local (COM/XPCOM) and remote (SOAP) invocation APIs
* Chipset: added support for the Intel ICH9 chipset with 3 PCI buses, PCI express and Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI)
* Audio: Intel HD Audio is now available as guest hardware, for better support with modern guest operating systems (e.g. 64-bit Windows; bug #2785).
* GUI: redesigned user interface with guest window preview
* GUI: new display mode with downscaled guest display
* Resource control: added support for limiting a VM's CPU time and IO bandwidth.
* Storage: support asynchronous I/O for iSCSI, VMDK, VHD and Parallels images
* Storage: support for resizing VDI and VHD images
* Windows Additions: support for automatically updating the Guest Additions (requires installed Windows Guest Additions 4.0 or later)
* Guest Additions: support for copying files into the guest file system

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

* VMM: Enable large page support by default on 64-bit hosts (applies to nested paging only)
* VMM: fixed guru meditation when running Minix (VT-x only; bug #6557)
* GUI: the guest VM list is now sortable
* GUI: add the possibility to delete all harddisk attached to an VM, when this VM is deleted (bug #5511)
* GUI: built-in creation of desktop file shortcuts to start VMs on double click (bug #2322)
* GUI: add configuration dialog for port forwarding in NAT mode (bug #1657)
* GUI: show the guest window content on save and restore
* GUI: certain GUI warnings don't stop the VM output anymore
* Settings: deleting a machine now automatically deletes all snapshots and saved states as well, it is no longer necessary to manually delete snapshots first; VBoxManage unregistervm --delete can do the same now
* Snapshots: added screenshots
* 3D support: allow use of CR_SYSTEM_GL_PATH again (bug #6864)
* 3D support: fixed various clipping/visibility issues (bugs #5659, #5794, #5848, #6018, #6187, #6570)
* 3D support: guest application stack corruption when using glGetVertexAttrib[ifd]v (bug #7395)
* 2D Video acceleration: multimonitor support
* VRDP: fixed rare crash in multimonitor configuration
* Display: fixed occasional guest resize crash
* NAT: port forwarding rules can be applied at runtime
* SATA: allow to attach CD/DVD-ROM drives including passthrough (bug #7058)
* Floppy: support readonly image files, taking this as the criteria for making the medium readonly (bug #5651)
* Audio: the DirectSound backend now allows VMs to be audible when another DirectSound application is active, including another VM (bug #5578)
* EFI: support for SATA disks and CDROMs
* BIOS: reduce the stack usage of the VESA BIOS function #4F01 (Quake fix)
* OVF/OVA: significant performance improvements during export and import
* OVF/OVA: creation of the manifest file on export is optional now
* OVF/OVA: allow overwriting the target disk format on import
* OVF/OVA: fixed export of VMs with iSCSI disks
* Storage: Apple DMG image support for the virtual CD/DVD (bug #6760)
* Linux host USB support: introduced a less invasive way of accessing raw USB devices (bugs #1093, #5345, #7759)
* Guest Additions: Shared Folders now can be marked as being auto-mounted on Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
* Linux Additions: Shared Folders now support symbolic links (bug #818)
* Linux Additions: combined 32-bit and 64-bit additions into one file
* Windows Additions: automatic logon on Windows Vista/Windows 7 is now able to handle renamed user accounts; added various bugfixes