VirtualBox 5.1 released

Postings relating to old VirtualBox pre-releases
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frank
Oracle Corporation
Posts: 3362
Joined: 7. Jun 2007, 09:11
Primary OS: Debian Sid
VBox Version: PUEL
Guest OSses: Linux, Windows
Location: Dresden, Germany
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VirtualBox 5.1 released

Post by frank »

This is a major update. The following major new features were added:
  • VMM: new APIC and I/O APIC implementations that result in significantly improved performance in certain situations (for example with networking, bug #15295)
  • VMM: added support for Hyper-V paravirtualized debugging of Windows guests
  • VMM: emulate even more MMIO and shadow pagetable exits without going back to user mode
  • GUI: overall migration to Qt5 (bug #11775)
  • GUI: passive API event listener improving the VM GUI performance and response time
  • Audio: added HDA (High Definition Audio) support for newer Linux guests
  • Audio: added on-demand timers which should improve the overall performance and reduce the CPU consumption
  • Audio: more fine-grained volume control for the AC'97 emulation, which now also takes the master volume control into account
  • better support for Python 3
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
  • VMM: activate the x2APIC by default for Linux guests
  • VMM: many more fixes
  • GUI: the Detach UI action is now a part of the VM Machine menu
  • GUI: reworked session information window
  • GUI: the new VM wizard now allows to choose the VM location for the VM which is being created
  • GUI: fixed location of touch events in unscaled HiDPI mode (bugs #14366, #14367)
  • GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup
  • Storage: use fallocate() or similar if present to speed up creating fixed-sized disk images (bug #5967)
  • Storage: implemented NVMHCI-compatible storage controller
  • Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements
  • E1000: implemented interrupt throttling for performance improvements
  • EFI: many improvements, for example allow to boot from USB
  • OVF: improved handling of signed manifests
  • API: Windows XP guests and Windows 2003 server guests now default to the E1000 T Server network card
  • VBoxSVC: fixed several memory leaks when handling .dmg images
  • Installers: ship VBoxBugReport
  • Windows hosts: reworked COM proxy (e.g. bug #8298)
  • Linux installers: no longer rely on DKMS for module rebuilding
  • Linux Additions: fix a problem when updating the initramfs after the guest modules are compiled (bug #15579)
  • Linux Additions: try to fix a problem where the OpenGL libraries w
Here is an incomplete list of changes since 5.1 RC1:
  • VMM: I/O-APIC fixes
  • GUI: Workaround for New VD wizard's slider issue (see here)
  • 3D: don't crash if 3D cannot be initialized (Mac OS X hosts only, see here)
  • API: fixed video recording with VBoxHeadless (bug 15443)
  • Storage: fixed a possible integer underflow when resizing a VDI image (bug 15582)
  • XPCOM: fixed a crash during shutdown under rare conditions
  • Windows Additions: fixed a crash in VBoxTray with Windows NT4 and Windows 2000 guests (see here)
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