9 ms·

VirtualBox 5.0 officially released

172 points by therealmarv 11y ago

agumonkey 11y ago
The detached start option is very nice. Also the vm group things, as tiny as it is, really helps when you setup multi-VMs netlabs.
yc1010 11y ago
"HiDPI!support" Does that mean Virtual Box will no longer look ridiculous on my 3840 x 2160 laptop screen?! Downloading....
- spleeder 11y ago
  Yes, that is absolutely what it means. Works beautifully on my Retina Macbook Pro.
  - netheril96 11y ago
    Been waiting for this since I bought a MacBook.
brizzle 11y ago
Windows 10 support? Anyone tied it yet?
- el_duderino 11y ago
  Yes, did you read the linked Data Sheet PDF from the article? > Improved Huge Range of Guest Platforms – including the very latest Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 and leading edge Linux platforms too. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/oracle-vm-virtualbox-ds-1655169.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclev...
  - FireBeyond 11y ago
    Well, in theory, given several other comments / complaints about things not quite working right (USB3, and the like), there is a difference between: "is it supported?" (yes) and "does it work well?"
- asifjamil 11y ago
  I've been using W10 on v4 fine for the past few weeks. Planning to update right now though.. anything you are concerned about specifically?
  - swasheck 11y ago
    have you been able to use virtio for network/storage?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Rob9 11y ago
  Just finished installing on my test PC. Ran Ubuntu (Since it was all I had on hand), and it keeps throwing errors when I try to power on the new machine. Going to install latest release and try again.
therealmarv 11y ago
If you are using Vagrant: Wait for the 1.7.3 release before upgrading https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 . How to upgrade Vagrant: Just install newest version. ETA: Tomorrow most likely https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952 https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- therealmarv 11y ago
  And it's out: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.md#173-july-10-2015 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.m... https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html
abhv 11y ago
Why do I get this from https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org when I access from Chrome? The site works from curl and Firefox. Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 436, in send_error data, 'text/html') File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/chrome.py", line 803, in render_template message = req.session.pop('chrome.%s.%d' % (type_, i)) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 212, in __getattr__ value = self.callbacks[name](self) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 298, in _get_session return Session(self.env, req) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 162, in __init__ self.get_session(sid) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 189, in get_session self.bake_cookie() File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 170, in bake_cookie assert self.sid, 'Session ID not set' AssertionError: Session ID not set UPDATE: same error from www UPDATE: curl --header "Cookie: trac_session=" https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org The issue seems to be that some plugin in Chrome erases my trac_session cookie, and the website cannot handle this. I am running Disrupt, uBlock, and PrivacyBadger. (1) Why does vbox need to track my session? (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.
- therealmarv 11y ago
  seems this domain without any subdomain is not good configured. Try https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org ... no problems here
- vegasje 11y ago
  I was seeing this a while back until I disabled a plugin I had installed. I can't remember which one it was. Try disabling your Chrome plugins and try again.
- fernandotakai 11y ago
  > (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case. from the stacktrace and the cookie name, they are using trac[0][1] [0] http://trac.edgewall.org/ http://trac.edgewall.org/ [1] http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession
bane 11y ago
As a fun experiment, I do my day-to-day computing entirely in a Virtualbox Windows VM guest that I've given 2 cores, 150GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. I'm about a year and a half into the experiment and still chugging along. It's a surprisingly performant day-to-day system, which I can snapshot to try out things, move to other machines if I need to, make backups etc. About the only thing it doesn't do well is really CPU intensive or GPU intensive operations. But it works fine for 2 monitors, web browsing, watching videos, etc. It's kind of surprising actually. From time to time I'll also spin up some Linux VMs and do various dev activities in a real Linux, which I usually just background and ssh into from my Windows VM. It's kind of nice having a virtual rack of machines to monkey around on. Less impressive has been trying to get Ubuntu to not feel terrible, but Centos works fine. If I need better performance, I'll dive back to the host OS and do those things, but it's mostly just for gaming or music production. Bonus, my host OS has stayed relatively free of junk and stays really snappy, even all this time later. My only recent problem is that the Windows 10 updater won't qualify the VM guest for the upgrade. So I'll probably have to grab the ISO and try it that way.
- jokr004 11y ago
  I do this because my employer has some silly policies and it was the only way they would let my run Linux on my localhost. Really I forget that I'm in the VM.. RAM is a little scarce, but all in all it works surprisingly well.
  - jeremiep 11y ago
    Same reason here, our IT department only supports windows and I've been mostly using VBox to work in linux at work for the past 3 years without any incident whatsoever. The clipboard, mouse and keyboard sharing are really fantastic. It really makes you forget this is a guest OS.
  - ake1 11y ago
    i've tried doing the same but the performance hit is unfortunately too big for me to find it acceptable. silly policies.
seren 11y ago
Installed it for USB3, did not manage to make it work, although I configured it.
- blinkingled 11y ago
  It requires installation of the Extension pack - make sure you got that updated.
cowsandmilk 11y ago
From the changelog[0]: Make more instruction set extensions available to the guest when running with hardware-assisted virtualization and nested paging. Among others this includes: SSE 4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-2, AES-NI, POPCNT, RDRAND and RDSEED This makes me incredibly happy. [0] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
beezle 11y ago
Advise caution if you are a windows 8.1 host. Besides still having to deal with https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178 https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178 this new version completely disabled networking, even after a reboot. Oracle has done a very good job of ruining VB for quite a few users.
- chrisper 11y ago
  It also doesn't work with Realtek VLAN.
- danudey 11y ago
  Meanwhile, performance (on an OS X host) compared to Parallels or VMWare is horrid. I ended up buying a Parallels license for when I do VM/OS install testing, which saves me hours a week.
comex 11y ago
One of the biggest features here, the virtual USB 3.0 controller, is closed source (as well as USB 2.0!). See: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing While it's available for free, the license only allows personal and educational use. Bleh.
- maho 11y ago
  To be fair, one should mention that the license of the extension pack allows you to install it at work and "run your multi-million euro business with it", without having to pay anything. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ
- snowwindwaves 11y ago
  I contacted oracle once to buy licenses and they said unless I needed 500 or more not to bother them
Koldark 11y ago
I might need to try this before my next upgrade to Parallels. If it works for what I need why spend the 100 bucks for each upgrade.
- ericcholis 11y ago
  I agree, I previously ran Parallels for Coherence; but found that some apps just didn't perform well. This, coupled with not being simultaneously able to run Vagrant/Docker while using Parallels will likely cause me to switch.
zurn 11y ago
Does this still require its own crashy kernel driver on Linux?
- blinkingled 11y ago
  Yes. They should find a way to make it work with KVM. Although I don't claim to understand how the new KVM/Hyper-V PV support is implemented, at least on Linux the 5.x RCs loaded the dreaded VBoxDrv.
lsllc 11y ago
Sadly, boot2docker 1.7.0 doesn't [yet?] work with VirtualBox 5
- skyebook 11y ago
  therealmarv mentioned 1.7.3 (coming in the next few days): https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572
- therealmarv 11y ago
  boot2docker is not connected to Vagrant, it speaks directly with Virtualbox. Maybe watch out in the boot2docker github repo when they gonna update it https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979 https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979 My advice also: Avoid the official docker installation. It will downgrade your Virtualbox 5.0 pretty sure!
snowwindwaves 11y ago
I've used Xen, VMWare workstation 9/10, but primarily Virtualbox since 2008, on linux and windows hosts and linux and windows guests. Virtualbox has really never let me down, I don't see any reason to use VMware workstation over it.
- cartoonfoxes 11y ago
  Personally, I've stuck with VMWare because the licensing costs are low enough that I'm never sufficiently motivated to spend time on a Virtualbox shakedown.
- Rondom 11y ago
  Last time I checked the seamless mode of VMWare was VASTLY superiour to the VirtualBox one. While VirtualBox did not much more than hide your desktop-background and make it transparent, VMware integrated the window manager of the guest OS into the host OS (i.e. guest-windows would appear in the host-OS window manager's window list). Furthermore it overlaid the screen with a button with an applications menu (native to the host-OS) sourced from the guest OS. Nowadays I am without a WMware licence, and I found that KVM and its frontends are enough for my use cases right now because I do not rely on Windows-VMs for my day-to-day work so I can always use X forwarding for an integrated experience.
  - lenkite 11y ago
    Extensively evaluated Vmware player vs virtual box for Ubuntu 14.04 desktop on W8.1 on my Thinkpad. Vmware might be a touch faster but too many things are broken - touchpad scrolling doesn't work - requires hacks to get this running ineffectively. Suspend and resume doesn't work..etc. Went back to Virtualbox since the experience is smoother.
whoisthemachine 11y ago
Hmm getting a hash sum mismatch when doing an apt-get update. Anyone else seeing this?

172 points by therealmarv 11y ago

The detached start option is very nice. Also the vm group things, as tiny as it is, really helps when you setup multi-VMs netlabs.

yc1010 11y ago

"HiDPI!support" Does that mean Virtual Box will no longer look ridiculous on my 3840 x 2160 laptop screen?! Downloading....

spleeder 11y ago
Yes, that is absolutely what it means. Works beautifully on my Retina Macbook Pro.
- netheril96 11y ago
  Been waiting for this since I bought a MacBook.

brizzle 11y ago

Windows 10 support? Anyone tied it yet?

el_duderino 11y ago
Yes, did you read the linked Data Sheet PDF from the article? > Improved Huge Range of Guest Platforms – including the very latest Windows 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 and leading edge Linux platforms too. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/oracle-vm-virtualbox-ds-1655169.pdf http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclev...
- FireBeyond 11y ago
  Well, in theory, given several other comments / complaints about things not quite working right (USB3, and the like), there is a difference between: "is it supported?" (yes) and "does it work well?"
asifjamil 11y ago
I've been using W10 on v4 fine for the past few weeks. Planning to update right now though.. anything you are concerned about specifically?
- swasheck 11y ago
  have you been able to use virtio for network/storage?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Rob9 11y ago
Just finished installing on my test PC. Ran Ubuntu (Since it was all I had on hand), and it keeps throwing errors when I try to power on the new machine. Going to install latest release and try again.

therealmarv 11y ago

If you are using Vagrant: Wait for the 1.7.3 release before upgrading https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 . How to upgrade Vagrant: Just install newest version. ETA: Tomorrow most likely https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952 https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
therealmarv 11y ago
And it's out: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.md#173-july-10-2015 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.m... https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html

abhv 11y ago

Why do I get this from https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org when I access from Chrome? The site works from curl and Firefox. Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 436, in send_error data, 'text/html') File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/chrome.py", line 803, in render_template message = req.session.pop('chrome.%s.%d' % (type_, i)) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 212, in __getattr__ value = self.callbacks[name](self) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 298, in _get_session return Session(self.env, req) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 162, in __init__ self.get_session(sid) File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 189, in get_session self.bake_cookie() File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 170, in bake_cookie assert self.sid, 'Session ID not set' AssertionError: Session ID not set UPDATE: same error from www UPDATE: curl --header "Cookie: trac_session=" https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org The issue seems to be that some plugin in Chrome erases my trac_session cookie, and the website cannot handle this. I am running Disrupt, uBlock, and PrivacyBadger. (1) Why does vbox need to track my session? (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.

therealmarv 11y ago
seems this domain without any subdomain is not good configured. Try https://www.virtualbox.org https://www.virtualbox.org ... no problems here
vegasje 11y ago
I was seeing this a while back until I disabled a plugin I had installed. I can't remember which one it was. Try disabling your Chrome plugins and try again.
fernandotakai 11y ago
> (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case. from the stacktrace and the cookie name, they are using trac[0][1] [0] http://trac.edgewall.org/ http://trac.edgewall.org/ [1] http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession

bane 11y ago

As a fun experiment, I do my day-to-day computing entirely in a Virtualbox Windows VM guest that I've given 2 cores, 150GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. I'm about a year and a half into the experiment and still chugging along. It's a surprisingly performant day-to-day system, which I can snapshot to try out things, move to other machines if I need to, make backups etc. About the only thing it doesn't do well is really CPU intensive or GPU intensive operations. But it works fine for 2 monitors, web browsing, watching videos, etc. It's kind of surprising actually. From time to time I'll also spin up some Linux VMs and do various dev activities in a real Linux, which I usually just background and ssh into from my Windows VM. It's kind of nice having a virtual rack of machines to monkey around on. Less impressive has been trying to get Ubuntu to not feel terrible, but Centos works fine. If I need better performance, I'll dive back to the host OS and do those things, but it's mostly just for gaming or music production. Bonus, my host OS has stayed relatively free of junk and stays really snappy, even all this time later. My only recent problem is that the Windows 10 updater won't qualify the VM guest for the upgrade. So I'll probably have to grab the ISO and try it that way.

jokr004 11y ago
I do this because my employer has some silly policies and it was the only way they would let my run Linux on my localhost. Really I forget that I'm in the VM.. RAM is a little scarce, but all in all it works surprisingly well.
- jeremiep 11y ago
  Same reason here, our IT department only supports windows and I've been mostly using VBox to work in linux at work for the past 3 years without any incident whatsoever. The clipboard, mouse and keyboard sharing are really fantastic. It really makes you forget this is a guest OS.
- ake1 11y ago
  i've tried doing the same but the performance hit is unfortunately too big for me to find it acceptable. silly policies.

seren 11y ago

Installed it for USB3, did not manage to make it work, although I configured it.

blinkingled 11y ago
It requires installation of the Extension pack - make sure you got that updated.

cowsandmilk 11y ago

From the changelog[0]: Make more instruction set extensions available to the guest when running with hardware-assisted virtualization and nested paging. Among others this includes: SSE 4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-2, AES-NI, POPCNT, RDRAND and RDSEED This makes me incredibly happy. [0] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

beezle 11y ago

Advise caution if you are a windows 8.1 host. Besides still having to deal with https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178 https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178 this new version completely disabled networking, even after a reboot. Oracle has done a very good job of ruining VB for quite a few users.

chrisper 11y ago
It also doesn't work with Realtek VLAN.
danudey 11y ago
Meanwhile, performance (on an OS X host) compared to Parallels or VMWare is horrid. I ended up buying a Parallels license for when I do VM/OS install testing, which saves me hours a week.

comex 11y ago

One of the biggest features here, the virtual USB 3.0 controller, is closed source (as well as USB 2.0!). See: https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing While it's available for free, the license only allows personal and educational use. Bleh.

maho 11y ago
To be fair, one should mention that the license of the extension pack allows you to install it at work and "run your multi-million euro business with it", without having to pay anything. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ
snowwindwaves 11y ago
I contacted oracle once to buy licenses and they said unless I needed 500 or more not to bother them

Koldark 11y ago

I might need to try this before my next upgrade to Parallels. If it works for what I need why spend the 100 bucks for each upgrade.

ericcholis 11y ago
I agree, I previously ran Parallels for Coherence; but found that some apps just didn't perform well. This, coupled with not being simultaneously able to run Vagrant/Docker while using Parallels will likely cause me to switch.

zurn 11y ago

Does this still require its own crashy kernel driver on Linux?

blinkingled 11y ago
Yes. They should find a way to make it work with KVM. Although I don't claim to understand how the new KVM/Hyper-V PV support is implemented, at least on Linux the 5.x RCs loaded the dreaded VBoxDrv.

lsllc 11y ago

Sadly, boot2docker 1.7.0 doesn't [yet?] work with VirtualBox 5

skyebook 11y ago
therealmarv mentioned 1.7.3 (coming in the next few days): https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572
therealmarv 11y ago
boot2docker is not connected to Vagrant, it speaks directly with Virtualbox. Maybe watch out in the boot2docker github repo when they gonna update it https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979 https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979 My advice also: Avoid the official docker installation. It will downgrade your Virtualbox 5.0 pretty sure!

snowwindwaves 11y ago

I've used Xen, VMWare workstation 9/10, but primarily Virtualbox since 2008, on linux and windows hosts and linux and windows guests. Virtualbox has really never let me down, I don't see any reason to use VMware workstation over it.

cartoonfoxes 11y ago
Personally, I've stuck with VMWare because the licensing costs are low enough that I'm never sufficiently motivated to spend time on a Virtualbox shakedown.
Rondom 11y ago
Last time I checked the seamless mode of VMWare was VASTLY superiour to the VirtualBox one. While VirtualBox did not much more than hide your desktop-background and make it transparent, VMware integrated the window manager of the guest OS into the host OS (i.e. guest-windows would appear in the host-OS window manager's window list). Furthermore it overlaid the screen with a button with an applications menu (native to the host-OS) sourced from the guest OS. Nowadays I am without a WMware licence, and I found that KVM and its frontends are enough for my use cases right now because I do not rely on Windows-VMs for my day-to-day work so I can always use X forwarding for an integrated experience.
- lenkite 11y ago
  Extensively evaluated Vmware player vs virtual box for Ubuntu 14.04 desktop on W8.1 on my Thinkpad. Vmware might be a touch faster but too many things are broken - touchpad scrolling doesn't work - requires hacks to get this running ineffectively. Suspend and resume doesn't work..etc. Went back to Virtualbox since the experience is smoother.

whoisthemachine 11y ago

Hmm getting a hash sum mismatch when doing an apt-get update. Anyone else seeing this?