VirtualBox最早是德国一家软件公司InnoTek所开发的虚拟系统软件,后来被Sun收购,改名为Sun VirtualBox,在Sun被Oracle收购后现改名为Oracle VirtualBox.因为他是开源的,不同于VM,而且功能强大,可以在 Linux/Mac 和 Windows 主机中运行, 并 支持在其中安装 Windows (NT 4.0、2000、XP、Server 2003、Vista)、DOS/Windows 3.x、Linux (2.4 和 2.6)、OpenBSD 等系列的客户操作系统.假如你曾经有用过虚拟机软件的经历的话，相信使用 VirtualBox 不在话下。即便你是一个新手，也没有关系。VirtualBox 提供了详细的文档，可以助你在短期内入门。VirtualBox 3.2.0 (released 2010-05-18)
This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:
- Following the acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation, the product is now called Oracle VM VirtualBox and all references were changed without impacting compatibility
- Experimental support for Mac OS X guests (see the manual for more information)
- Memory ballooning to dynamically in- or decrease the amount of RAM used by a VM (64-bit hosts only) (see the manual for more information)
- Page Fusion automatically de-duplicates RAM when running similar VMs thereby increasing capacity. Currently supported for Windows guests on 64-bit hosts (see the manual for more information)
- CPU hot-plugging for Linux (hot-add and hot-remove) and certain Windows guests (hot-add only) (see the manual for more information)
- New Hypervisor features: with both VT-x/AMD-V on 64-bit hosts, using large pages can improve performance (see the manual for more information); also, on VT-x, unrestricted guest execution is now supported (if nested paging is enabled with VT-x, real mode and protected mode without paging code runs faster, which mainly speeds up guest OS booting)
- Support for deleting snapshots while the VM is running
- Support for multi-monitor guest setups in the GUI for Windows guests (see the manual for more information)
- USB tablet/keyboard emulation for improved user experience if no Guest Additions are available (see the manual for more information).
- LsiLogic SAS controller emulation (see the manual for more information)
- RDP video acceleration (see the manual for more information)
- NAT engine configuration via API and VBoxManage
- Use of host I/O cache is now configurable (see the manual for more information)
- Guest Additions: added support for executing guest applications from the host system (replaces the automatic system presimparation feature; see the manual for more information)
- OVF: enhanced OVF support with custom namespace to preserve settings that are not part of the base OVF standard
In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:
- VMM: fixed Windows 2000 guest crash when configured with a large amount of RAM (bug #5800)
- Linux/Solaris guests: PAM module for automatic logons added
- GUI: guess the OS type from the OS name when creating a new VM
- GUI: added VM setting for passing the time in UTC instead of passing the local host time to the guest (bug #1310)
- GUI: fixed seamless mode on secondary monitors (bugs #1322 and #1669)
- GUI: offer to download the user manual in the OSE version (bug #6442)
- Main: allow to start a VM even if a virtual DVD or floppy medium is not accessible
- Settings: be more robust when saving the XML settings files
- Mac OS X: rewrite of the CoreAudio driver and added support for audio input (bug #5869)
- Mac OS X: external VRDP authentication module support (bug #3106)
- Mac OS X: Moved the realtime dock preview settings to the VM settings (no global option anymore). Use the dock menu to configure it.
- Mac OS X: added the VM menu to the dock menu
- 3D support: fixed corrupted surface rendering (bug #5695)
- 3D support: fixed VM crashes when using ARB_IMAGING (bug #6014)
- 3D support: fixed assertion when guest applications uses several windows with single OpenGL context (bug #4598)
- 3D support: added GL_ARB_pixel_buffer_object support
- 3D support: added OpenGL 2.1 support
- 3D support: fixed Final frame of Compiz animation not updated to the screen (Mac OS X only) (bug #4653)
- 3D support: fixed blank screen after loading snapshot of VM with enabled Compiz
- Added support for virtual high precision event timer (HPET)
- OVF: fixed mapping between two IDE channels in OVF and the one IDE controller in VirtualBox
- OVF: fix VMDK format string identifiers and sort XML elements from rasd: namespace alphabetically as prescribed by standard
- VBoxShell: interactive Python shell extended to be fully functional TUI for VirtualBox
- Linux Additions: support Fedora 13 (bug #6370)
- VBoxManage: fixed overly strict checks when creating a raw partition VMDK (bugs #688, #4438)