6 ms·

Virtual Box 5.1

158 points by spv 10y ago

mkesper 10y ago
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog
christogreeff 10y ago
Has anyone done performance tests with different versions of VirtualBox? I often see entries in the changelog relating to "significantly improved performance".
- mrmondo 10y ago
  snap, asked the same question at the same time, I've heard this many times, and many times I've found it to be slow as heck.
- PaulKeeble 10y ago
  I did a test for VMWare player verses Virtualbox and its no competition, VMWare is hands down a lot faster especially on anything GUI. I like what Virtualbox gives us but the performance is a problem.
  - nickjj 10y ago
    I noticed the same thing. VMWare (at least in my experience) runs a GUI in Unity mode at pretty much the same speed as native for xubuntu guests. I/O performance over shared folders is really good in VMWare too. The only problem is VMWare has abandoned Linux guests in Unity mode for newer releases of VMWare, which likely means you'll be stuck on 7.x and running older guest versions until the end of time. For me, VirtualBox's deal breakers are: - VBox doesn't support dual monitors in seamless mode while VMWare does. - VBox is not capable of running another 64bit OS inside of itself through virtualization, so using Vagrant inside of VBox is not happening. VMWare does not have this limitation.
    - MichaelGG 10y ago
      VMware seems to have mostly abandoned Workstation. The team was fired. They even encourage you to no longer use their actually-working binary tools, instead telling you to use the often-broken-it-seems open source versions. Fortunately for Windows hosts, the new Linux personality for NT might be good enough for dev work. Still sucks for people that want to use VMs in a more serious way.
      - frostmatthew 10y ago
        > VMware seems to have mostly abandoned Workstation. There were just updates for Workstation[1] and Player[2] less than two months ago. > The team was fired. The team was replaced, and not simply to do only maintenance patches: "They’ve got a great surprise lined up for Q3, something very interesting for Q4, and something very big for H1."[3] [N.B. I work for VMware, though not in End User Computing] [1] http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/workstation/11/workstation-1114-release-notes.html http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/workstation/11/works... [2] http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/player/7/player-714-release-notes.html http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/player/7/player-714-... [3] http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.html http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...
        nickjj 10y ago
        Can you give any insight on the future of Linux guests on Windows hosts using the free Player version? I just want to be able to run xubuntu 16.x (and newer when it comes out) in Unity mode without issues but from what I read only 14.x works because none of the guest tooling has been updated. It's a pity that this use case seems to have put on the back burner. This type of set up is the only way for a lot of people to work without resorting to buying 2 computers or dual booting.
        frostmatthew 10y ago
        > I just want to be able to run xubuntu 16.x (and newer when it comes out) in Unity mode Apparently Workstation 12 removed Unity mode for Linux guests because it was rarely used[1] - I'm just speculating (I don't work in End User Computing) but I imagine that was based on Customer Experience Improvement Program (a.k.a. telemetry) data (I know some people prefer to opt-out of participating but the information is useful, we just implemented it in the product I work on and we're looking forward to being able to make better decisions about feature/bug priority based on it). If you'd like to provide feedback on Unity support for Linux you might want to tweet to the Workstation team @vmw_workstation (and/or perhaps their PM, @mikeroysoft). [1] https://communities.vmware.com/thread/518735 https://communities.vmware.com/thread/518735
  - revanx_ 10y ago
    which guest OS did you use for testing?
  - davidcollantes 10y ago
    I agree on the speed, VMWare has performed faster, at least for me. I like the price of VirtualBox, its size, and easy install. VMWare seems to install more things (it is heavier).
mrmondo 10y ago
Anyone tested to see if the network and disk IO is actually any faster than before? We found it _very_ slow in the past compared to VMWare Fusion on OSX.
CoolGuySteve 10y ago
I'm not sure why, but my Ubuntu image with unity always thinks it should run at 10fps. I had to hard set the frame rate in compizConfig at 60 fps to get it to run smoothly. Putting it here because it took me quite a while to figure out why it was 3D accelerated but still so slow.
- ctrlrsf 10y ago
  I don't think mine ran at 10fps, but definitely felt laggy. Especially rendering Firefox.
- zouhair 10y ago
  i3wm all the way
- Siecje 10y ago
  Not sure if it is related (could be a Cinnamon problem) but when I run the Cinnamon desktop environment in a VirtualBox VM it says it is using software rendering.
- jeffbr13 10y ago
  Changing the pointing device from default touch mode to PS/2 mouse in Machine>Settings>System fixed that for me. Seems to be the default for Ubuntu machines in recent versions.
- cptskippy 10y ago
  Any VM I provision seems to be setup by default with 1mb of video memory and 3D Acceleration off. The option to enable 2D Acceleration is greyed out. The funny thing is that VB complains about this configuration whenever you load the console. Have you tried increasing the video memory for the VM or enabling acceleration?
wildpeaks 10y ago
If you're using Vagrant, stick to 5.0.24 until this issue is closed: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7411 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7411
- infocollector 10y ago
  Does this have to do with just the version number? Or something more?
  - apetresc 10y ago
    There's an open PR to add 5.1 support, and it seems to just be a bit-for-bit identical copy of the 5.0 code which Vagrant inexplicably requires a separate driver for: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/pull/7574 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/pull/7574 All the heavy-duty OOP-first power of Ruby at their fingertips, and people still just copy-and-paste massive files to change a version string...
    - dmunoz 10y ago
      I only looked very briefly, but yes in this case 5.1 driver hasn't made any changes other than the version. But doing a quick vimdiff with a few of the other drivers show that the files have seen some substantial changes over time, and in some cases the small differences between two versions of a driver are to work around bugs, whether new or newly identified.
StevePerkins 10y ago
With Oracle's rocky reputation around open source, I'm surprised that VirutalBox is still going strong and under active development. There doesn't seem to be any kind of commercial "enterprise version" that they license for big bucks... what is their incentive for keeping this thing going?
- _pmf_ 10y ago
  Hush. Don't give them ideas.
- tobias3 10y ago
  You have to buy Oracle VM VirtualBox (i.e. the enterprise version) to use the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (USB 2.0+3.0 support) commercially.
  - davweb 10y ago
    This isn't completely true. You can use it for free commercially as long as you install it yourself. The Licensing FAQ [1] says: > Also, if you install it on your work PC at some large company, this is still personal use. However, if you are an administrator and want to deploy it to the 500 desktops in your company, this would no longer qualify as personal use. [1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ
- a3n 10y ago
  VirtualBox is last in the alphabet. We're safe for awhile.
- FireBeyond 10y ago
  It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion, and Parallels (at least in the Vagrant, etc, ecosystem) has always been a second class citizen). Not to mention that Parallels licensing is a pain. I understand license key activation as at times a necessary evil but in cases where you are developing a product for use primarily by developers who may frequently re-install their computer, could you at least do some form of trivial hardware checksumming? I had to call support because I'd exceeded five activations of my license. They reset it, after asking why. Several months later, same situation - this time they refused to reset the activation counter. Once loyal customer, no longer, when you refuse to activate software for the purchaser. Thankfully, Docker et al seem to be making some good strides at making use of Hyve based virtualization in the OS X realm. I'm excited to see how that progresses.
blub 10y ago
I don't see any security-related fixes. Is VBox that solid or am I missing something? I remember also looking at previous versions and not finding much...
- viraptor 10y ago
  "VMM: many more fixes", "GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup", "Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements" - who know what that means. If nobody disclosed it externally as a vulnerability, they could just call things "bugfixes". But it's not like they don't get any security issues at all: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=virtualbox https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=virtualbox
kelvin0 10y ago
"... better support for Python 3". Why does VB need to better support a specific executable, namely python 3? Anyone have more technical details on this?
- amelius 10y ago
  After searching a bit, there seems to be a Python API for controlling Virtual Box. Perhaps that is what is meant here.
- vetinari 10y ago
  VirtualBox supports scripting using python; for that, it provides a python module. Just like any other python library, it needs to specifically support py3 syntax, or errors may happen.
- ygra 10y ago
  VirtualBox offers a Python API (among others): http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch11.html http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch11.html.
  - kelvin0 10y ago
    OK, Python for using their VM's API. Yes, that rings a bell. However, from the notes it seemed like something they modified in the VM to better support python with the guest OS ... did not make sense until. Thanks!
maxkleberson 10y ago
They squashed a number of annoying bugs with this release - not least this annoying touch one: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14367 https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14367
methehack 10y ago
There's some negativity around this product on this thread, but honestly I'm really glad Virtual Box is around and under active development. I have both an active linux and os x env for dev and I use virtual box to manage and switch between. It's been super useful, very reliable, fast enough, and, btw, it's free.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  Do you just have a vanilla OSX VM installation or do you optimize it in some way? For me OSX is very slow on vbox on a very decently spec'ed VM. Far from my experience with Windows guests.
  - methehack 10y ago
    My OS X install is native; my linux is vbox. So OS X is the host.
Jare 10y ago
My understanding is that on Windows, VirtualBox still can't run along Docker For Windows, because DFW needs Hyper-V and VBox is incompatible. Is this still the case? I don't ask much of my VMs, but desktop Ubuntu guests under Hyper-V are very clunky.
- Ianvdl 10y ago
  IIRC that is not something that VirtualBox can fix; I read somewhere that Hyper-V requires exclusive use of the virtualisation features of the hardware. Note that this only applies to 64-bit virtualisation, you can still run Hyper-V and 32-bit VirtualBox virtual machines simultaneously.
Can_Not 10y ago
Are any modern alternatives to VMWare player and Oracle VirtualBox for running a Linux guest OS (with GUI) on a Windows desktop host?
- ilaksh 10y ago
  Maybe qemu?

158 points by spv 10y ago

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

Has anyone done performance tests with different versions of VirtualBox? I often see entries in the changelog relating to "significantly improved performance".

mrmondo 10y ago
snap, asked the same question at the same time, I've heard this many times, and many times I've found it to be slow as heck.
PaulKeeble 10y ago
I did a test for VMWare player verses Virtualbox and its no competition, VMWare is hands down a lot faster especially on anything GUI. I like what Virtualbox gives us but the performance is a problem.
- nickjj 10y ago
  I noticed the same thing. VMWare (at least in my experience) runs a GUI in Unity mode at pretty much the same speed as native for xubuntu guests. I/O performance over shared folders is really good in VMWare too. The only problem is VMWare has abandoned Linux guests in Unity mode for newer releases of VMWare, which likely means you'll be stuck on 7.x and running older guest versions until the end of time. For me, VirtualBox's deal breakers are: - VBox doesn't support dual monitors in seamless mode while VMWare does. - VBox is not capable of running another 64bit OS inside of itself through virtualization, so using Vagrant inside of VBox is not happening. VMWare does not have this limitation.
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    VMware seems to have mostly abandoned Workstation. The team was fired. They even encourage you to no longer use their actually-working binary tools, instead telling you to use the often-broken-it-seems open source versions. Fortunately for Windows hosts, the new Linux personality for NT might be good enough for dev work. Still sucks for people that want to use VMs in a more serious way.
    - frostmatthew 10y ago
      > VMware seems to have mostly abandoned Workstation. There were just updates for Workstation[1] and Player[2] less than two months ago. > The team was fired. The team was replaced, and not simply to do only maintenance patches: "They’ve got a great surprise lined up for Q3, something very interesting for Q4, and something very big for H1."[3] [N.B. I work for VMware, though not in End User Computing] [1] http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/workstation/11/workstation-1114-release-notes.html http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/workstation/11/works... [2] http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/player/7/player-714-release-notes.html http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/player/7/player-714-... [3] http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.html http://blogs.vmware.com/workstation/2016/07/meet-the-team.ht...
      - nickjj 10y ago
        Can you give any insight on the future of Linux guests on Windows hosts using the free Player version? I just want to be able to run xubuntu 16.x (and newer when it comes out) in Unity mode without issues but from what I read only 14.x works because none of the guest tooling has been updated. It's a pity that this use case seems to have put on the back burner. This type of set up is the only way for a lot of people to work without resorting to buying 2 computers or dual booting.
        frostmatthew 10y ago
        > I just want to be able to run xubuntu 16.x (and newer when it comes out) in Unity mode Apparently Workstation 12 removed Unity mode for Linux guests because it was rarely used[1] - I'm just speculating (I don't work in End User Computing) but I imagine that was based on Customer Experience Improvement Program (a.k.a. telemetry) data (I know some people prefer to opt-out of participating but the information is useful, we just implemented it in the product I work on and we're looking forward to being able to make better decisions about feature/bug priority based on it). If you'd like to provide feedback on Unity support for Linux you might want to tweet to the Workstation team @vmw_workstation (and/or perhaps their PM, @mikeroysoft). [1] https://communities.vmware.com/thread/518735 https://communities.vmware.com/thread/518735
- revanx_ 10y ago
  which guest OS did you use for testing?
- davidcollantes 10y ago
  I agree on the speed, VMWare has performed faster, at least for me. I like the price of VirtualBox, its size, and easy install. VMWare seems to install more things (it is heavier).

mrmondo 10y ago

Anyone tested to see if the network and disk IO is actually any faster than before? We found it _very_ slow in the past compared to VMWare Fusion on OSX.

CoolGuySteve 10y ago

I'm not sure why, but my Ubuntu image with unity always thinks it should run at 10fps. I had to hard set the frame rate in compizConfig at 60 fps to get it to run smoothly. Putting it here because it took me quite a while to figure out why it was 3D accelerated but still so slow.

ctrlrsf 10y ago
I don't think mine ran at 10fps, but definitely felt laggy. Especially rendering Firefox.
zouhair 10y ago
i3wm all the way
Siecje 10y ago
Not sure if it is related (could be a Cinnamon problem) but when I run the Cinnamon desktop environment in a VirtualBox VM it says it is using software rendering.
jeffbr13 10y ago
Changing the pointing device from default touch mode to PS/2 mouse in Machine>Settings>System fixed that for me. Seems to be the default for Ubuntu machines in recent versions.
cptskippy 10y ago
Any VM I provision seems to be setup by default with 1mb of video memory and 3D Acceleration off. The option to enable 2D Acceleration is greyed out. The funny thing is that VB complains about this configuration whenever you load the console. Have you tried increasing the video memory for the VM or enabling acceleration?

wildpeaks 10y ago

If you're using Vagrant, stick to 5.0.24 until this issue is closed: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7411 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/issues/7411

infocollector 10y ago
Does this have to do with just the version number? Or something more?
- apetresc 10y ago
  There's an open PR to add 5.1 support, and it seems to just be a bit-for-bit identical copy of the 5.0 code which Vagrant inexplicably requires a separate driver for: https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/pull/7574 https://github.com/mitchellh/vagrant/pull/7574 All the heavy-duty OOP-first power of Ruby at their fingertips, and people still just copy-and-paste massive files to change a version string...
  - dmunoz 10y ago
    I only looked very briefly, but yes in this case 5.1 driver hasn't made any changes other than the version. But doing a quick vimdiff with a few of the other drivers show that the files have seen some substantial changes over time, and in some cases the small differences between two versions of a driver are to work around bugs, whether new or newly identified.

StevePerkins 10y ago

With Oracle's rocky reputation around open source, I'm surprised that VirutalBox is still going strong and under active development. There doesn't seem to be any kind of commercial "enterprise version" that they license for big bucks... what is their incentive for keeping this thing going?

_pmf_ 10y ago
Hush. Don't give them ideas.
tobias3 10y ago
You have to buy Oracle VM VirtualBox (i.e. the enterprise version) to use the Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack (USB 2.0+3.0 support) commercially.
- davweb 10y ago
  This isn't completely true. You can use it for free commercially as long as you install it yourself. The Licensing FAQ [1] says: > Also, if you install it on your work PC at some large company, this is still personal use. However, if you are an administrator and want to deploy it to the 500 desktops in your company, this would no longer qualify as personal use. [1] https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Licensing_FAQ
a3n 10y ago
VirtualBox is last in the alphabet. We're safe for awhile.
FireBeyond 10y ago
It's also made even uglier by the fact that VMware has discontinued Fusion, and Parallels (at least in the Vagrant, etc, ecosystem) has always been a second class citizen). Not to mention that Parallels licensing is a pain. I understand license key activation as at times a necessary evil but in cases where you are developing a product for use primarily by developers who may frequently re-install their computer, could you at least do some form of trivial hardware checksumming? I had to call support because I'd exceeded five activations of my license. They reset it, after asking why. Several months later, same situation - this time they refused to reset the activation counter. Once loyal customer, no longer, when you refuse to activate software for the purchaser. Thankfully, Docker et al seem to be making some good strides at making use of Hyve based virtualization in the OS X realm. I'm excited to see how that progresses.

blub 10y ago

I don't see any security-related fixes. Is VBox that solid or am I missing something? I remember also looking at previous versions and not finding much...

viraptor 10y ago
"VMM: many more fixes", "GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup", "Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements" - who know what that means. If nobody disclosed it externally as a vulnerability, they could just call things "bugfixes". But it's not like they don't get any security issues at all: https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=virtualbox https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=virtualbox

kelvin0 10y ago

"... better support for Python 3". Why does VB need to better support a specific executable, namely python 3? Anyone have more technical details on this?

amelius 10y ago
After searching a bit, there seems to be a Python API for controlling Virtual Box. Perhaps that is what is meant here.
vetinari 10y ago
VirtualBox supports scripting using python; for that, it provides a python module. Just like any other python library, it needs to specifically support py3 syntax, or errors may happen.
ygra 10y ago
VirtualBox offers a Python API (among others): http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch11.html http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch11.html.
- kelvin0 10y ago
  OK, Python for using their VM's API. Yes, that rings a bell. However, from the notes it seemed like something they modified in the VM to better support python with the guest OS ... did not make sense until. Thanks!

maxkleberson 10y ago

They squashed a number of annoying bugs with this release - not least this annoying touch one: https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14367 https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/14367

methehack 10y ago

There's some negativity around this product on this thread, but honestly I'm really glad Virtual Box is around and under active development. I have both an active linux and os x env for dev and I use virtual box to manage and switch between. It's been super useful, very reliable, fast enough, and, btw, it's free.

rpgmaker 10y ago
Do you just have a vanilla OSX VM installation or do you optimize it in some way? For me OSX is very slow on vbox on a very decently spec'ed VM. Far from my experience with Windows guests.
- methehack 10y ago
  My OS X install is native; my linux is vbox. So OS X is the host.

Jare 10y ago

My understanding is that on Windows, VirtualBox still can't run along Docker For Windows, because DFW needs Hyper-V and VBox is incompatible. Is this still the case? I don't ask much of my VMs, but desktop Ubuntu guests under Hyper-V are very clunky.

Ianvdl 10y ago
IIRC that is not something that VirtualBox can fix; I read somewhere that Hyper-V requires exclusive use of the virtualisation features of the hardware. Note that this only applies to 64-bit virtualisation, you can still run Hyper-V and 32-bit VirtualBox virtual machines simultaneously.

Can_Not 10y ago

Are any modern alternatives to VMWare player and Oracle VirtualBox for running a Linux guest OS (with GUI) on a Windows desktop host?

ilaksh 10y ago
Maybe qemu?