V6.0 - any big features?

[Technologov]

So far only "Oracle Cloud" support is the only big feature which I don't use anyway.

What about nested VMX? Or other goodies?

UPDATE:
- New File Manager.
- Oracle cloud integration.
- Virtual ISO support. (VISO; Better DVD emulation)
- 3 video cards (VboxVGA, VBoxSVGA, VMSVGA); not sure why we need 3.

[socratis]

Long shot... but I think that if nested virtualization was enabled, they would have mentioned something, don't you think?

In fact, I'm pretty sure that all the "goodies" would have been in the release notes...

[Technologov]

Well so far v6.0, according to release notes, looks quite uninteresting and uninspiring. (I'm far from my PC so can't test it now)

Especially for a major release

[socratis]

I think Oracle/Oracle's customers will beg to differ...

[mpack]

The decision to bump the major version number on a piece of software is often completely arbitrary. Yes it will often be associated with some new feature that can be claimed, and at other times the excuse is that too many minor increments have accumulated that together can be considered a major change.

I've been toying with moving to a date based versioning system for my own software, to remove the arbitrariness. E.g. version 18.11 would mean that it dates from November 2018. The downside is that if you don't update your software for 4 years, the age shows. The upside is that if a customer is on 16.05 and he sees that 18.11 is available then he knows he's behind the times. Of course that's a new millenium bug in the making, but we have 82 years before the next wraparound so who cares...

[Technologov]

Back to the topic : Can I get a free evaluation of Oracle Cloud to BETA test v6.0?

[Armando]

Well, being this the very first Beta, maybe some other new features and improvements are still to be announced. :]

[socratis]

Typically, when a software enter a beta-cycle, all features are frozen. Only bugfixes are accepted, and in some cases, features that don't make it are usually removed rather than added.

[klaus]

BETA1 is a little non-typical for us... it's very early, mostly motivated to have the OCI technology preview available by Oracle OpenWorld (which currently happens in San Francisco). Not all features are complete or even present. Nested virtualization is partially done, on AMD CPUs it already works, and on Intel CPUs it doesn't yet, so no mention in the announcements.

And since you asked if there's free OCI evaluation access: yes, see https://cloud.oracle.com/tryit - as developers we don't have experience how this works out for "small customers". How about checking it out and letting everyone know about the reality? If anyone runs into blockers, please let us know. We can try to poke the responsible people at Oracle.

[ender1]

Alex Ionescu noticed some quite interesting things in the source, but it doesn't look like these are enabled yet:

https://twitter.com/aionescu/status/1046112551971414016

[socratis]

Alex Ionescu noticed some quite interesting things in the source

That's been in the making for way more than you think...
If you just looked at/followed the Timeline for the source code changes, it's all there...

it doesn't look like these are enabled yet

I know at least one thing that's enabled; the icon for the CPU icon/badge/status (in the lower right corner of the VM window) when using the native execution API. It should provide plenty of hints of what the developers think about that...

versus

[Winyl]

If only support for dumping NVRAM during VM shutdown to a file was added. VB really needs this for UEFI support. Some parts are present in code,but absolutely no one is interested in completing the feature.

[Technologov]

What are the practical uses for UEFI? I can see only two:
1. Mac guest support.
2. Guest Disks larger than 2 TB bootable. (A very questionable bonus, since you can always use multiple vHDDs)

[socratis]

but absolutely no one is interested in completing the feature

If you're referring to customers, you might be on to something...

What are the practical uses for UEFI? I can see only two

Absolutely correct. But you wouldn't believe how many people choose EFI, just because it's newer and they believe that their VM will be 2x faster!

Same with ICH9 even though it's clearly marked as experimental, same with virtio-net vs. Intel PRO1000 even though the virtio-net is actually slower in VirtualBox because it's not as optimized as the Intel one. Oh well...

[mpack]

same with virtio-net vs. Intel PRO1000 even though the virtio-net is actually slower in VirtualBox

I find that one hard to believe. Virtio-net is effectively a straight passthrough to network API of the host. I don't see how a register level hardware emulation on top of that can ever make it faster.

And it doesn't tally with what we were told at the time of the feature being implemented, and which the user manual still says:

Depending on which types of adapters and attachments are used the network performance will be different. Performance-wise the virtio network adapter is preferable over Intel PRO/1000 emulated adapters, which are preferred over PCNet family of adapters.