Virtualbox 1.6.0

[Hard core Rikki]

OS virtualization without all the bloat

Changelog - VirtualBox

VirtualBox 1.6.0 (released 2008-04-30)

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

* Solaris and Mac OS X host support
* Seamless windowing for Linux and Solaris guests
* Guest Additions for Solaris
* A webservice API
* SATA hard disk (AHCI) controller
* Experimental Physical Address Extension (PAE) support

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

* GUI: added accessibility support (508)
* GUI: VM session information dialog
* VBoxHeadless: renamed from VBoxVRDP
* VMM: reduced host CPU load of idle guests
* VMM: many fixes for VT-x/SVM hardware-supported virtualization
* ATA/IDE: better disk geometry compatibility with VMware images
* ATA/IDE: virtualize an AHCI controller
* Storage: better write optimization, prevent images from growing unnecessarily.
* Network: support PXE booting with NAT
* Network: fixed the Am79C973 PCNet emulation for Nexenta guests
* NAT: improved builtin DHCP server (implemented DHCPNAK response)
* NAT: port forwarding stopped when restoring the VM from a saved state
* NAT: make subnet configurable
* XPCOM: moved to libxml2
* XPCOM: fixed VBoxSVC autostart race
* Audio: SoundBlaster 16 emulation
* USB: fixed problems with USB 2.0 devices
* MacOS X: fixed seamless mode
* MacOS X: better desktop integration, several look’n’feel fixes
* MacOS X: switched to Quartz2D framebuffer
* MacOS X: added support for shared folders
* MacOS X: added support for clipboard integration
* Solaris: added host audio playback support (experimental)
* Solaris: made it possible to run VirtualBox from non-global zones
* Shared Folders: made them work for NT4 guests
* Shared Folders: many bugfixes to improve stability
* Seamless windows: added support for Linux guests
* Linux installer: support DKMS for compiling the kernel module
* Linux host: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25
* Windows host: support for USB devices has been significantly improved; many additional USB devices now work
* Windows Additions: automatically install AMD PCNet drivers on Vista guests
* Linux additions: several fixes, experimental support for RandR 1.2
* Linux additions: compatibility fixes with Linux 2.6.25

[cottonvibes]

i've always wondered how advance are these OS virtualizations.

can you play DX10 games with it? and if you can, what is the speed impact from running of a Virtual OS.

[Hard core Rikki]

Most if not all of these virtualization solution lack gpu acceleration, so DX10, I really dont think would be manageable, if even DX9 is being troublesome. Such apps are handier with programs and for crossplatform testing, not really for gaming.
The overhead is generally pretty big (in VMware for instance), but Virtualbox is much more lenient on system ressources, and yet managing to remain nearly as capable as VMware...

[cottonvibes]

i see.

so basically what is the most practical use of a Virtual OS?

if you can't game on them, then i don't really see a point.

i guess it could make crossplatform testing easier like you said; but a real developer would probably test it on the actual OS instead of a virtual OS, to make sure it really runs correctly.
And installing a regular OS is probably easier than installing a virtual OS.

[Hard core Rikki]

Restarting all the time to boot into different OSes is pretty tiresome and unoptimal (time-wise). Running XP inside Vista, or XP inside Ubuntu sure has a certain comfort to it, that dualbooting does not have.

If the topic interests you, you might want a read at this, as a start.
Personally, VMs can be pretty handy when you freeze them (allows you to inspect the whole memory range or that of specific softs, cool for finding out 'hidden stuff' that actively hides its presence)

[liquid]

Vmware Workstation 6.5 now supports DirectX9 but its currently slow and buggy. Maybe overtime virtualbox will begin to support hardware acceleration.

Virtualization has its merits in that it's a very reliable method of running most applications were a small sacrifice in speed is considered acceptable.

[S.SubZero]

Big companies use virtualization for running vertical apps on operating systems that may no longer be supported, ie. OS/2. OS/2 can't run well (if at all) on new hardware, but throw it in a virtual machine and it can run wonderfully. There's also consolidation with security, such as taking the tasks of several separate physical servers and throwing them all on one server with virtual machines to separate them. I had a Windows Server 2003-level forest and domain set up in virtual machines on my laptop, and it was awesome.

Virtualization was *never* meant to be a gaming thing. Don't expect to run your leet Linux distro of the month but still be able to fire up Crysis in a VM. Not gonna happen.