
Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.2 Is Now Available - nikolay
https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/vbox52
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nikolay

      Notable enhancements in this release:
      
      - VM export to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Classic (OCI Classic) format
      - Automatic, unattended guest OS installation for Oracle VM VirtualBox Virtual Machines
      - Improved Virtual Machine Tools, including a new dynamic interface to manage Virtual Machine configuration and snapshot capabilities
      - New Global Tools handling
        * Virtual Media Manager manages media attributes like size, location, type and description
        * Host Network Manager simplifies managing corresponding networks and their attributes
      - GUI accessibility
        * New GUI icons for VirtualBox on all platforms (Windows, Linux, Oracle Solaris and Mac OS X)
        * Enhanced Virtual Machine Selector
        * Extended audio settings, with the option to enable/disable audio input/output
        * Snapshot Pane updates allow easier management of snapshot attributes, like name and description
      - Audio
        * Device enumeration support for audio backends (optional)
        * Support for host device callbacks (optional) and further enhancements
        * HDA emulation now uses asynchronous data processing in separate threads
      - Storage
        * Support for CUE/BIN images as CD/DVD media including multiple tracks
        * Support for the controller memory buffer feature for NVMe

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torstenvl
Just FYI, when you post content like that, it is completely unreadable.

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Aloha
How?

It's formatted monospaced text, its perfectly readable to me.

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croddin
It doesn’t wrap on mobile and you have to scroll horizontally to read it all.

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mrweasel
Nor does it wrap in Firefox, so pretty annoying on desktops as well. Unless
you're using a large monitor.

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stephenr
FYI this will break the current version of Vagrant if you use the VirtualBox
provider (which is default):
[https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080](https://github.com/hashicorp/vagrant/issues/9080)

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apple4ever
Ugh figures I read that after updating.

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SonOfKyuss
I searched the release notes and manual but couldn't find an answer. Does
anyone know if this release fixes the problem of not cleanly shutting down the
guest OS when the Windows host does an automated update/reboot? It's really
annoying to have Windows run an update overnight and see that it did a dirty
shutdown of my Linux dev instance guest.

Virtualbox has a "save state" option. It would be nice if it would perform a
"save state" on all guests when the host reboots.

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Aloha
This strikes me as a windows issue, not a VirtualBox one. How does windows
kill applications that have not exited, how long does it wait to do so, etc?

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SonOfKyuss
The VirtualBox process is notified of Windows shutdown and power management
events. It can choose to save the state or "power down" the guest OS. There is
a setting to manage the default action to take, but it doesn't seem to work
reliably.

[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348](https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#idm9348)

~~~
Aloha
I wonder if its taking too long to save state, so windows kills the process
and proceeds with its reboot

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breakingcups
That's probably it, Windows 10 is incredibly aggressive in killing
applications when rebooting for an update. In corporate settings it's even
worse, we're currently having a glitch where, no matter what our
administrators specify as policy, computers _will_ just randomly reboot
sometime after Patch Tuesday for a reboot. Without notification, without a
chance to save your work. Just _poof_.

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nas
Given that Oracle seems to have the midas shit touch (RIP John Dunsworth),
does anyone have suggestions on Virtualbox alternatives? VMWare is the obvious
one I guess.

It's great that they have released 5.2 and that they are adding new things.
Virtualbox is a handy tool for me and I'm just afraid one day soon Oracle will
turn it to shit.

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baobrien
On Linux, I've been using kvm with libvirt and virt-manager as the GUI.

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chainsaw10
Have you gotten Windows to work well as a guest?

I could never get it to work as well as it does with VirtualBox.

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baobrien
I don't know about working as well as it does in VirtualBox, but with the QXL
guest driver to do screen resizing and clipboard sharing, it's not too bad.

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smacktoward
What's the current state of GPU passthrough on VirtualBox?

Currently I dual boot between Windows (games) and Linux (everything else). I
would _love_ to just single-boot into Linux as a host and then have a Windows
VM for games that need it. But that's only practical if the VM has full access
to the GPU, and last I heard GPU passthrough on VirtualBox was kind of hit or
miss.

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chrisper
You can use Qemu for that. I used to do that for a while, but found it
annoying. Dual boot is much better imho, especially since it barley takes any
time.

When I had issues, I had no clue if it was because of my config, the game
being buggy, the nvidia drivers being buggy, etc. etc.

Also having to have "two"of everything is annoying as well.

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pizza234
You don't really need "two" of everything. You can have one monitor connected
to two video ports, and a single mouse and keybord, a pass them through.

QEMU itself can be run via a short script, and it only requires to be run as
sudo.

You shouldn't really have issues in a general sense: with the correct setup,
after a short time (having exhausted the tweaking options) one will experience
if the machine is compatible with VGA passthrough, or not. In the latter case,
the problem is that either the guest doesn't work at all, or that it has
performance problems.

The is at least one radical advantage in having a virtualized Windows:
rollbacks. When I use a Windows guest, I don't care whether I'll take malware
or not, since to rollback is trivial.

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wildpeaks
I wish I didn't have to choose between Docker for Windows (which requires
Hyper-V enabled) and Virtualbox (which requires Hyper-V disabled afaik) on
Windows 10, both are useful.

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0xbear
Tried it a few weeks ago to run Windows, guest os got corrupted right after
installation. Searched Google and apparently this happens quite a lot. I’d say
you get what you pay for, but KVM works fine. It’s just slow because there’s
no graphics acceleration.

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icf80
Never had any corruption ever with VirtualBox.

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eugenekolo2
I have. And a whole onslaught of numerous other issues. Most of them seem to
be documented in bugs 5+ years old that never get fixed.

I was once a Virtualbox fan boy. But, I'm going with KVM and Vmware moving
forward.

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quuquuquu
Just a friendly reminder, from a former Oracle employee who was laid off
recently, that Oracle is cancerous, rapacious, and DOES NOT respect you as a
user or customer.

They WILL audit you. They WILL sue you. They WILL harass you. They WILL
deceive you. Period. End of story. And they will make 100k easily off of you.

DON'T use Oracle products unless you are prepared to deal with these types of
arbitrary, long, painful battles.

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icf80
Bridged networking not working in Virtualbox 5.2 - Windows 10 x64 Host with
Windows x64 Guest at least. I had to go back to 5.1.30.

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davidcollantes
Does anyone has a screenshot? I am curious to know how those "new GUI icons"
look like, but don't want to install it just for see them.

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chrisper
Here you go:

[https://imgur.com/a/uSt73](https://imgur.com/a/uSt73)

