Discuss the 5.0 release

This is for discussing general topics about how to use VirtualBox.
michaln
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by michaln »

Armando wrote:Such a move would also be effective in preventing people from trying to install VBox 5 in Win10 (or XP) hosts and then posting forum messages asking for help with resulting problems.
The real problem is that users upgrade their existing Windows setup to 10 and we have no way to warn them. Once they upgraded the OS, they're in trouble, and whether they're using VirtualBox 5.0.0 or 4.3 doesn't really matter.

Obviously common sense dictates not upgrading a system you depend on without double checking that it will remain usable, but common sense clearly isn't as good as it used to be.
Armando
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by Armando »

michaln wrote:The real problem is that users upgrade their existing Windows setup to 10 and we have no way to warn them. Once they upgraded the OS, they're in trouble, and whether they're using VirtualBox 5.0.0 or 4.3 doesn't really matter.
I understand your point and surely agree about the widely underestimated risks in upgrading an OS (or any software, actually) without a proper double (or triple :wink: ) checking, together with a planned way to easily go back in case of trouble.

Anyway, supposing a rare "wise" user fully reads VBox5 press release before upgrading to Win10 (or before upgrading to VBox5 in an XP host or in a system already upgraded to Win10), he would easily get in trouble despite being clever and cautious, wouldn't he? 8)
plasmab
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by plasmab »

I'm happy to accept that VB is broken on W10 at the moment (since its free for me) but the download page says

"VirtualBox 5.0 for Windows hosts"

Which unless it caveats that W10 is not supported (combined with the press releases) gives a clear impression that W10 is supported. Someone will try and help me get it working being my definition of support. Given the uptake rate of W10 i think its a legitimate topic for discussion.

I found it odd though because I upgraded one of my Windows boxes and it does work and another one does not.
michaln
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by michaln »

plasmab wrote:Which unless it caveats that W10 is not supported (combined with the press releases) gives a clear impression that W10 is supported. Someone will try and help me get it working being my definition of support. Given the uptake rate of W10 i think its a legitimate topic for discussion.
Certainly. But in this context, "supported" means "is expected to work", not "effort is being made to make it work".
I found it odd though because I upgraded one of my Windows boxes and it does work and another one does not.
If Windows 10 was 100% backward compatible with Windows 8.1, VirtualBox would of course work just fine... but it's not, so there are lots of more or less minor glitches.

Anyway, somewhat off topic when discussing the 5.0.0 release.
michaln
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by michaln »

Because it's apparently not clear, I will try to explain again what "support" means (and yes the term is vague). For Oracle customers, a "supported" software/hardware combination means that they can expect it to work, and if it doesn't, it's a bug which Oracle has to fix reasonably quickly. Obviously "unsupported" isn't the same as "doesn't work", but it does mean that customers cannot open bugs against an unsupported product/combination when something really doesn't work.

The current list of supported host and guest operating systems for VirtualBox is listed here. This is what's available for customers. Notice that Windows 10 is not listed.

With the freely available version of VirtualBox, the term "supported" is used in a much looser fashion because users aren't entitled to bug fixes anyway. In this context "supported" means "as far as we know it works". If it doesn't, we'll probably try to fix it, but if and when is entirely up to us.

Windows 10 is currently in a kind of twilight (or is it dawn?) zone where it's not officially supported but will be in the future. It's certainly not something we'd recommend for production systems. We obviously try to fix problems, but there can be no expectation of what and when will be fixed.

(Windows XP is in the other kind a twilight zone where it's no longer officially supported by Oracle but things that used to work will likely stay working for a while.)
mpack
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Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by mpack »

We now have two pages of this topic filled with people discussing the meaning of the word "supported". That is surely enough!

No more please.
Brutalizer
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Joined: 7. Oct 2012, 18:24

Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by Brutalizer »

Host: Solaris 11.2
Guest: Win7 Enterprise
VirtualBox v5.0

BUG: When I start my VM in seamless mode, the VM aborts after logging in.
Workaround: Start the VM in full screen mode, and then switch over to seamless mode.
Zismat
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Joined: 10. Aug 2015, 22:51

Re: Discuss the 5.0 release

Post by Zismat »

Frank Mehnert wrote:
smithlar wrote:The sha and md5 checksum files listed on the download page still reflect 4.3.28 - not 5.0.
Thanks! Fixed.
I had the same issues!
Now works fine!
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