We would like to thank all our Beta testers for their hard work and for all their suggestions and feedback!
Notable changes since VirtualBox 3.1.0 Beta 3:
- GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows
- GUI: show a warning when the last CD/DVD-ROM device should be removed
- GUI: fixed black screen when color depth was not 32bpp in Windows guests (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
- SATA: fixed using of VMDK images with the SATA controller
- VBoxSDL: fixed a crash on termination (Windows hosts only)
- Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don't interpret mouse wheel events as left click (bug #5049)
- Linux Additions: work around mounts failing if a file of the same name as the share exists in the current directory
- Linux Additions: some message fixes in the installer
- Linux Additions: some Fedora 7 and 8 guest SELinux fixes in the installer
- Linux Additions: a 64-bit guest fix in the installer
- Linux Additions: fix installation on guests with non-sys-V-style init
- Linux Additions: use the newer (X.Org server 1.5) mouse driver with X.Org server 1.3 and 1.4 on Linux, as Fedora 8 didn't want to load the old one.
- Windows Additions: VBoxTray writes build version and revision to the release log
- Windows Additions: fixed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information
- VBoxManage modifyvm: allow negative offsets for --biossystemtimeoffset (3.1.0 Beta 1 regression)
- VBoxManage: fix a few bugs in the output of VBoxManage showinfo (mostly in the machinereadable output)
- Main/NetworkAdapter: fix return value if NATNetwork attribute is not set
The following major new features were added:
- Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
- VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well ("branched snapshots"; see the manual for more information)
- 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
- More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to a arbitrary IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
- The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
- Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
- Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
- Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
- Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)
- VMM: guest SMP fixes for certain rare cases
- GUI: snapshots include a screenshot
- GUI: locked storage media can be unmounted by force
- GUI: the a log window grabbed all key events from other GUI windows (bug #5291)
- GUI: allow to disable USB filters (bug #5426)
- GUI: improved memory slider in the VM settings
- GUI: the VirtualBox website couldn't be opened from the help menu (bug #4559)
- 3D support: major performance improvement in VBO processing
- 3D support: added GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_compiled_vertex_array support
- 3D support: fixed crashes in FarCry, SecondLife, Call of Duty, Unreal Tournament, Eve Online (bugs #2801, #2791)
- 3D support: fixed graphics corruption in World of Warcraft (#2816)
- 3D support: fixed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (#4653)
- 3D support: fixed incorrect rendering of non ARGB textures under compiz
- iSCSI: support iSCSI targets with more than 2TiB capacity
- VRDP: fixed occasional VRDP server crash (bug #5424)
- Network: fixed the E1000 emulation for QNX (and probably other) guests (bug #3206)
- NAT: added host resolver DNS proxy (see the manual for more information)
- VMDK: fixed incorrectly rejected big images split into 2G pieces (bug #5523, #2787)
- VMDK: fixed compatibility issue with fixed or raw disk VMDK files (bug #2723)
- VHD: fixed incompatibility with Hyper-V
- Support for Parallels version 2 disk image (HDD) files; see the manual for more information
- OVF: create manifest files on export and verify the content of an optional manifest file on import
- OVF: fixed memory setting during import (bug #4188)
- Mouse device: now five buttons are passed to the guest (bug #3773)
- VBoxHeadless: fixed loss of saved state when VM fails to start
- VBoxSDL: fixed crash during shutdown (Windows hosts only)
- X11 based hosts: allow the user to specify their own scan code layout (bug #2302)
- Mac OS X hosts: don't auto show the menu and dock in fullscreen (bug #4866)
- Mac OS X hosts (64 bit): don't interpret mouse wheel events as left click (bug #5049)
- Mac OS X hosts: fixed a VM abort during shutdown under certain conditions
- Solaris hosts: combined the kernel interface package into the VirtualBox main package
- Solaris hosts: support for OpenSolaris Boomer architecture (with OSS audio backend).
- Shared folders: VBOXSVR is visible in Network folder (Windows guests, bug #4842)
- Shared folders: performance improvements (Windows guests, bug #1728)
- Windows, Linux and Solaris Additions: added balloon tip notifier if VirtualBox host version was updated and Additions are out of date
- Solaris guests: fixed keyboard emulation (bug #1589)
- Solaris Additions: fixed as_pagelock() failed errors affecting guest properties (bug #5337)
- Windows Additions: added automatic logon support for Windows Vista and Windows 7
- Windows Additions: improved file version lookup for guest OS information
- Windows Additions: fixed runtime OS detection on Windows 7 for session information
- Windows Additions: fixed crash in seamless mode (contributed by Huihong Luo)
- Linux Additions: added support for uninstalling the Linux Guest Additions (bug #4039)
- Linux guest shared folders: allow mounting a shared folder if a file of the same name as the folder exists in the current directory (bug #928)
- SDK: added object-oriented web service bindings for PHP5