VirtualBox ha rilasciato una nuova major release, la 7.0 per chi non lo conoscesse VirtualBox è un software di virtualizzazione commerciale proprietario (con una versione ridotta distribuita secondo i termini della GNU General Public License) sviluppato da Oracle Corporation.
Questa nuova versione di VirtualBox, include importanti novità: miglioramenti all’interfaccia utente (GUI), inclusi editor incorporati, impostazioni di archiviazione avanzate, miglioramenti del puntatore del mouse, nonché gruppi di macchine virtuali migliorati.
Lato hardware aggiunge è stato aggiunto il supporto per il file system APFS di Apple, il supporto NVRAM e supporto per dispositivi SATA/NVMe non standard ed è presente anche una nuova tastiera virtuale mentre è stato rimosso l’old style 3D.
Le novità maggiori di questa nuova release sono:
- Virtual machines can be fully encrypted now, including the VM config logs and saved states (CLI only for now)
- OCI: Cloud virtual machines can be added to Virtual Machine Manager and controlled as local VMs
- OCI: Cloud networks can now be configured via Network Manager tool same way as it is done for Host-only and NAT networks
- GUI: Added a new utility similar to “top” or “resource monitor” which lists peformance statistics (CPU usage, RAM usage, disk I/O rate, etc.) of running guests
- GUI: Reworked the new vm wizard to integrate the unattended guest OS installation and to have a more streamlined work flow
- GUI: Added a new help viewer widget which enables the user manual to be navigated and searched
- GUI: Adding new notification center unifying most of running progresses and error reporting around the GUI
- GUI: Improved theme support on all platforms. Linux and macOS use native engine while for Windows host it is separately implemented.
- GUI: Large icon update.
- Audio recording: Now using Vorbis as the default audio format for WebM containers. Opus is no longer being used.
- Audio: Added “default” host driver type to make it possible to move VMs (appliances) between different platforms without the need of changing the audio driver explicitly. When the “default” driver is selected, the best audio backend option for a platform will be used. This is the default for newly created VMs.
- Guest Control: Implemented initial support for automatic updating of Guest Additions for Linux guests
- Guest Control: Implemented ability to wait for and/or reboot the guest when updating Guest Additions via VBoxManage
- VBoxManage: Added Guest Control “waitrunlevel” sub-command to make it possible to wait for a guest to reach a certain run level
- Windows hosts: Added experimental support of running autostarted VMs in session 0, to allow running VMS even when a usser is not being logged in (disabled by default, please consult the manual)
- macOS host: Providing a Developer Preview package for systems with an Apple silicon CPU. This is unsupported work in progress, and is known to have very modest performance.
- Linux Guest Additions: Reworked guest screen re-size functionality, added basic integration with some of guest Desktop Environments
- Devices: Implemented new 3D support based on DirectX 11 (and DXVK on non Windows hosts)
- Devices: Added virtual IOMMU devices (Intel and AMD variant)
- Devices: Added virtual TPM 1.2 and 2.0 devices
- Devices: The EHCI and XHCI USB controller devices are now part of the open source base package
- EFI: Added support for Secure Boot
- Debugging: Added experimental support for guest debugging through GDB and highly experimental support for guest debugging through KD/WinDbg
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
- OCI: Cloud networking functionality is enhanced for local VMs, now local VMs could be connected to cloud networking
- GUI: Improved behavior of the virtual machine list and various VM related tools in case multiple items are selected
- GUI: On available platforms, added a new option to disable the host’s screensaver
- GUI: Reworked global preferences, machine settings and the wizards to improve stability and usability
- GUI: Improving mouse handling in multi-monitor case on X11 platform
- GUI: Medium enumeration engine was reworked to improve permormance
- GUI: NAT Network stuff was moved from global preferences to global Network Manager tool
- GUI: Extension Pack Manager was moved from global preferences to global tools
- GUI: Improved overall accessibility
- GUI: Migrating to recent Qt versions.
Virtualbox 7.0.12 essendo una maintenance release introduce molte novità, tra le nuove caratteristiche e correzioni ci sono:
- VMM: Fixed using a debugger inside the guest under certain circumstances
- VMM: Fixed detection of VT-x being used by other hypervisors
- VMM: Introduced additional improvements in Split Lock Detection feature of recent Intel CPUs on Linux hosts
- GUI: Fixed issue when the nested hardware virtualization setting was not displayed in the VM details panel
- GUI: Introduced NLS update for Croatian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch and Turkish languages as well as added general look-and-feel improvements
- Devices: Fixed black screen in Windows guests with multiple guest screens when 3D is disabled (7.0.10 regression)
- Devices: Fixed PCI device identifiers for the VirtIO network interface
- Devices: Fixed VLAN support for the VirtIO network interface
- Devices: Fixed loading saved states when a TPM is configured
- Networking: Fixed memory leaks in the VBoxIntNetSwitch process on macOS
- Networking: Fixed TCP connections with IP addresses ending on .2 when the NAT network attachment is used
- VRDP: Added general improvements
- VBoxManage: Added improvements for “list usbfilters” command
- Unattended: Added kick start file support for Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 9.
- Main: Added more Linux OS subtypes
- Host Services: Fixed Guest Properties service crash under rare circumstance
- Linux Host and Guest: Fixed few “field-spanning write” kernel warnings
- Linux Guest Additions: Added more fixes for RHEL 8.9 and 9.3 kernel
- Linux Guest Additions: Added more fixes for kernel 6.4
- Linux Guest Additions: Added initial support for OpenSUSE 15.5 kernel
- Linux Guest Additions: Added initial support for kernels 6.5 and 6.6
- Linux Guest Additions: Added version reporting for “rcvboxadd status-kernel” and “rcvboxadd status-user” commands
- BIOS: Restored support for ISA SCSI HBAs in the BIOS
Il Changelog completo comunque lo trovate in questa pagina.
Usando VirtualBox, si sarà in grado di installare altri sistemi operativi guest (ognuno chiamato Guest OS) ognuno indipendente dall’altro con un proprio ambiente virtuale e usarli contemporaneamente su un solo pc e di poter passare da un sistema all’altro in tempo reale con tanto di copia e incolla, condivisioni delle periferiche, connessione internet.
Con VirtualBox possiamo installare anche decine di sistemi operativi, ad esempio sul vostro computer potete installare e utilizzare Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6 and 3.x), Solaris e OpenSolaris, OS/2 e OpenBSD.
Installare VirtualBox tramite Pacchetti
Tutto ciò che dovete fare è scegliere dalla seguente lista il vostro pacchetto ed installarlo con un semplice doppio click:
Installare VirtualBox tramite Repository
Primo passo: Installare chiave Autenticazione del Repository di VirtualBox
Prima bisogna aggiungere la chiave pubblica, per far questo aprite un Terminale e incollateci il seguente comando:
wget -O- https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc | sudo gpg --dearmor --yes --output /usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg
Secondo passo: Aggiungere il Repository
Adesso bisogna aggiungere il repository (a seconda della versione di Ubuntu che stiamo usando). apri con l’editor di testo Gedit il file sources.list:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
ed incolla nel file di testo la riga corrispondente alla versione di Ubuntu che stai utilizzando:
Per Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/oracle-virtualbox-2016.gpg] http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jammy contrib
Per Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa:
deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/virtualbox.gpg] http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian focal contrib
Ora, dopo aver incollato la riga, salvate e chiudete l’editor di testo.
Installare VirtualBox 7.0.12 in Jammy Jellyfish, Focal, Bionic e Xenial
Dopo aver aggiunto il Repository e la chiave di autenticazione è sufficiente effettuare le seguenti operazioni nel terminale per installare VirtualBox 7.0.12 in Ubuntu Jammy Jellyfish, Focal, Bionic o Xenial.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install virtualbox-7.0
Vi consiglio di installare anche il pacchetto relativo alle estensioni di VirtualBox che potete scaricare da questa pagina, una volta installato aprite VirtualBox andate su File -> Impostazioni e nella scheda Estensioni cliccate sul pulsante per aggiungere un’estensione e selezionate l’estensione appena scaricata.
Se usate un’ altra distribuzione diversa da Ubuntu, visitate VirtualBox Download Page.
Bisogna ricordare anche che nel Software Center di Ubuntu è presente anche la versione open source di VirtualBox, basta cercare virtualbox-ose.