

VirtualBox 5.0 officially released - therealmarv
https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_vm_virtualbox_5_07

======
bane
As a fun experiment, I do my day-to-day computing entirely in a Virtualbox
Windows VM guest that I've given 2 cores, 150GB of storage and 4GB of RAM. I'm
about a year and a half into the experiment and still chugging along.

It's a surprisingly performant day-to-day system, which I can snapshot to try
out things, move to other machines if I need to, make backups etc. About the
only thing it doesn't do well is really CPU intensive or GPU intensive
operations.

But it works fine for 2 monitors, web browsing, watching videos, etc.

It's kind of surprising actually.

From time to time I'll also spin up some Linux VMs and do various dev
activities in a real Linux, which I usually just background and ssh into from
my Windows VM. It's kind of nice having a virtual rack of machines to monkey
around on.

Less impressive has been trying to get Ubuntu to not feel terrible, but Centos
works fine.

If I need better performance, I'll dive back to the host OS and do those
things, but it's mostly just for gaming or music production.

Bonus, my host OS has stayed relatively free of junk and stays really snappy,
even all this time later.

My only recent problem is that the Windows 10 updater won't qualify the VM
guest for the upgrade. So I'll probably have to grab the ISO and try it that
way.

~~~
jokr004
I do this because my employer has some silly policies and it was the only way
they would let my run Linux on my localhost. Really I forget that I'm in the
VM.. RAM is a little scarce, but all in all it works surprisingly well.

~~~
ake1
i've tried doing the same but the performance hit is unfortunately too big for
me to find it acceptable. silly policies.

~~~
ewzimm
You should try it in Hyper-V. GPU-accelerated desktops are still no good, but
everything else performs really well.

~~~
ake1
from what i understand it, hyper-v is only supported by a couple of distros
and even then, the performance gains are not that noticable. definitely worth
looking into none the less, thanks.

------
therealmarv
If you are using Vagrant: Wait for the 1.7.3 release before upgrading
[https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/5572)
. How to upgrade Vagrant: Just install newest version. ETA: Tomorrow most
likely
[https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952](https://twitter.com/mitchellh/status/619163221992189952)

~~~
therealmarv
And it's out:
[https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.m...](https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/blob/v1.7.3/CHANGELOG.md#173-july-10-2015)

[https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html](https://www.vagrantup.com/downloads.html)

------
comex
One of the biggest features here, the virtual USB 3.0 controller, is closed
source (as well as USB 2.0!). See:

[https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-
installing](https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#intro-installing)

While it's available for free, the license only allows personal and
educational use. Bleh.

~~~
maho
To be fair, one should mention that the license of the extension pack allows
you to install it at work and "run your multi-million euro business with it",
without having to pay anything.

[https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ)

------
beezle
Advise caution if you are a windows 8.1 host. Besides still having to deal
with
[https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178](https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/13187#comment:178)
this new version completely disabled networking, even after a reboot.

Oracle has done a very good job of ruining VB for quite a few users.

~~~
danudey
Meanwhile, performance (on an OS X host) compared to Parallels or VMWare is
horrid. I ended up buying a Parallels license for when I do VM/OS install
testing, which saves me hours a week.

------
yc1010
"HiDPI!support"

Does that mean Virtual Box will no longer look ridiculous on my 3840 x 2160
laptop screen?!

Downloading....

~~~
spleeder
Yes, that is absolutely what it means. Works beautifully on my Retina Macbook
Pro.

~~~
netheril96
Been waiting for this since I bought a MacBook.

------
cowsandmilk
From the changelog[0]:

Make more instruction set extensions available to the guest when running with
hardware-assisted virtualization and nested paging. Among others this
includes: SSE 4.1, SSE4.2, AVX, AVX-2, AES-NI, POPCNT, RDRAND and RDSEED

This makes me incredibly happy.

[0]
[https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog](https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog)

------
abhv
Why do I get this from
[https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org) when I access from
Chrome? The site works from curl and Firefox.

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 436, in
send_error data, 'text/html')

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/chrome.py", line 803, in
render_template message = req.session.pop('chrome.%s.%d' % (type_, i))

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/api.py", line 212, in
__getattr__ value = self.callbacks[name](self)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/main.py", line 298, in
_get_session return Session(self.env, req)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 162, in
__init__ self.get_session(sid)

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 189, in
get_session self.bake_cookie()

File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/web/session.py", line 170, in
bake_cookie assert self.sid, 'Session ID not set'

AssertionError: Session ID not set

UPDATE: same error from www

UPDATE: curl --header "Cookie: trac_session="
[https://www.virtualbox.org](https://www.virtualbox.org)

The issue seems to be that some plugin in Chrome erases my trac_session
cookie, and the website cannot handle this. I am running Disrupt, uBlock, and
PrivacyBadger.

(1) Why does vbox need to track my session?

(2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.

~~~
fernandotakai
> (2) What python framework are they using? App should not fail in this case.

from the stacktrace and the cookie name, they are using trac[0][1]

[0] [http://trac.edgewall.org/](http://trac.edgewall.org/)

[1]
[http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession](http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/TracSession)

------
snowwindwaves
I've used Xen, VMWare workstation 9/10, but primarily Virtualbox since 2008,
on linux and windows hosts and linux and windows guests.

Virtualbox has really never let me down, I don't see any reason to use VMware
workstation over it.

~~~
Rondom
Last time I checked the seamless mode of VMWare was VASTLY superiour to the
VirtualBox one. While VirtualBox did not much more than hide your desktop-
background and make it transparent, VMware integrated the window manager of
the guest OS into the host OS (i.e. guest-windows would appear in the host-OS
window manager's window list). Furthermore it overlaid the screen with a
button with an applications menu (native to the host-OS) sourced from the
guest OS.

Nowadays I am without a WMware licence, and I found that KVM and its frontends
are enough for my use cases right now because I do not rely on Windows-VMs for
my day-to-day work so I can always use X forwarding for an integrated
experience.

~~~
lenkite
Extensively evaluated Vmware player vs virtual box for Ubuntu 14.04 desktop on
W8.1 on my Thinkpad. Vmware might be a touch faster but too many things are
broken - touchpad scrolling doesn't work - requires hacks to get this running
ineffectively. Suspend and resume doesn't work..etc. Went back to Virtualbox
since the experience is smoother.

------
zurn
Does this still require its own crashy kernel driver on Linux?

~~~
blinkingled
Yes. They should find a way to make it work with KVM. Although I don't claim
to understand how the new KVM/Hyper-V PV support is implemented, at least on
Linux the 5.x RCs loaded the dreaded VBoxDrv.

------
agumonkey
The detached start option is very nice. Also the vm group things, as tiny as
it is, really helps when you setup multi-VMs netlabs.

------
whoisthemachine
Hmm getting a hash sum mismatch when doing an apt-get update. Anyone else
seeing this?

------
seren
Installed it for USB3, did not manage to make it work, although I configured
it.

~~~
blinkingled
It requires installation of the Extension pack - make sure you got that
updated.

------
Koldark
I might need to try this before my next upgrade to Parallels. If it works for
what I need why spend the 100 bucks for each upgrade.

~~~
ericcholis
I agree, I previously ran Parallels for Coherence; but found that some apps
just didn't perform well.

This, coupled with not being simultaneously able to run Vagrant/Docker while
using Parallels will likely cause me to switch.

------
brizzle
Windows 10 support? Anyone tied it yet?

~~~
el_duderino
Yes, did you read the linked Data Sheet PDF from the article?

> _Improved Huge Range of Guest Platforms – including the very latest Windows
> 10, Windows Server 2012 R2 and leading edge Linux platforms too._

[http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclev...](http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/oraclevm/oracle-
vm-virtualbox-ds-1655169.pdf)

~~~
FireBeyond
Well, in theory, given several other comments / complaints about things not
quite working right (USB3, and the like), there is a difference between:

"is it supported?" (yes)

and

"does it work well?"

------
lsllc
Sadly, boot2docker 1.7.0 doesn't [yet?] work with VirtualBox 5

~~~
therealmarv
boot2docker is not connected to Vagrant, it speaks directly with Virtualbox.
Maybe watch out in the boot2docker github repo when they gonna update it
[https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979](https://github.com/boot2docker/boot2docker/issues/979)
My advice also: Avoid the official docker installation. It will downgrade your
Virtualbox 5.0 pretty sure!

