Oracle releases VM VirtualBox 4.0 Beta 3

Only one week after releasing the second beta, Oracle has issued a third beta for version 4.0 of the open source VirtualBox desktop virtualisation application for x86 hardware. Like the previous beta version, the latest beta does not include any new features and focuses on bugs found in earlier development versions and regressions in the 3.2.x branch. Bug fixes are included for issues related to, for example, 3D support, Solaris hosts, multi-sector BIOS reading, Windows 2000 guests and performance problems in 32-bit SMP guests.

Oracle's Frank Mehnert says that the preview of the next major update to VirtualBox is considered to be a "bleeding-edge release meant for early evaluation and testing purposes". As with all development releases, use in production environments and on mission critical systems is not advised. The developers ask users testing the release not to report issues to the VirtualBox Bugtracker, but instead to provide feedback about any problems they encounter via the VirtualBox forum.

Further information about the development preview can be found in a post on the VirtualBox Forums and in the official release announcement. VirtualBox 4.0.0 Beta 3 is available to download from the project's site. The latest stable release of VM VirtualBox is version 3.2.12 from the end of November.

Starting with version 4.0, the license for VirtualBox has changed. For the first time, both the base Oracle VM VirtualBox product source code and the binary are licensed under the GPLv2, while the Extension Pack mechanism, which allows third-party sources to add their own add-on functionality, is licensed under the PUEL. The change means that distributors shipping the Open Source Edition (OSE) of VirtualBox no longer need to build from the sources themselves.

See also:

• Oracle releases VM VirtualBox update 3.2.12, a report from The H.

(crve)