* Modularity. VirtualBox has an extremely modular design with well-defined internal programming interfaces and a client/server design. This makes it easy to control it from several interfaces at once: for example, you can start a virtual machine in a typical virtual machine GUI and then control that machine from the command line, or possibly remotely. VirtualBox also comes with a full Software Development Kit: even though it is Open Source Software, you don´t have to hack the source to write a new interface for VirtualBox.

* Virtual machine descriptions in XML. The configuration settings of virtual machines are stored entirely in XML and are independent of the local machines. Virtual machine definitions can therefore easily be ported to other computers.

* Guest Additions for Windows and Linux. VirtualBox has special software that can be installed inside Windows and Linux virtual machines to improve performance and make integration much more seamless. Among the features provided by these Guest Additions are mouse pointer integration and arbitrary screen solutions (e.g. by resizing the guest window).

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows and Linux 32-bit hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), and OpenBSD.

What’s New in version 2.0.0:

This version is a major update. The following major new features were added:

* 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)

* New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts

* The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements

* New-version notifier

* Guest property information interface

* Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts

* New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts

* Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)

* Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)


* Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)

* Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests

* Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts

* Support for VHD disk images

In addition, the following items were fixed and/or added:

* VMM: VT-x fixes

* AHCI/SATA: improved performance

* GUI: keyboard fixes

* Linux installer: properly uninstall the package even if unregistering the DKMS module fails


* Linux additions: the guest screen resolution is properly restored

* Network: added support for jumbo frames (> 1536 bytes)

* Shared Folders: fixed guest crash with Windows Media Player 11

* Mac OS X: Ctrl+Left mouse click doesn’t simulate a right mouse click in the guest anymore. Use Hostkey+Left for a right mouse click emulation. (bug #1766)

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