VirtualBox 7.1 is now available to download for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Those upgrading from VirtualBox 7.0 or earlier will find a sizeable set of changes on offer, among them what Oracle describe as a “modernized look and feel”.
Set your expectations accordingly for while this update to VirtualBox does feature an improved UI, as well as a port to Qt 6, the extent of those changes are more ‘modest refinement’ than ‘major revamp’.
Basically, VirtualBox 7.1 now offers two UI modes: Basic (educes the number of options, settings, info, etc shown) and Expert (doesn’t hide anything). Switching between them is easy, and the basic mode is certainly cleaner looking.
But as some of you commented during the beta, VirtualBox could do with a more dramatic overhaul, especially now VMware Workstation Pro is free for everyone, and open-source virtualisation efforts like GNOME Boxes have raised the bar in user-friendliness.
Still, some change is better than none – so there’s hope!
Elsewhere, VirtualBox 7.1 finally supports clipboard haring under Wayland for Linux hosts and guests, and the Shared Clipboard feature gains initial support for copying files between Linux and Windows hosts/guests — handy!
Many Linux distributions offer unattended installation, and VirtualBox 7.1 follows other VM software in supporting this, including on Ubuntu.
VirtualBox 7.1 is the first release to officially support Apple Silicon, enabling virtualisation of Linux and *BSD VMs using ARM images.
Finally, VirtualBox’s Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) support is enhanced by a new performance dashboard to enable resource monitoring of cloud instances. Options to clone or reset compute instances were also added.
Other changes: –
- Improved performance of screen recording
- VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) certificate tweaks
- NAT gains new engine with IPv6 support
- EFI adds Microsoft DB/KEX certificates to new VMs
- Python 3.x compatibility
Sound good? You can download VirtualBox 7.1 for all major operating systems from the official website. A DEB package is provided for Ubuntu (this release comes too late for Ubuntu 24.10, so oracular offers v7.0.20 in its repos).