Oracle VirtualBox Reaches New Major 5.1 Release

Oracle VirtualBox 5.1, a new major update, has been released on this Tuesday, July 12.

Virtualbox 5.1 features overall migration to Qt5, better support for Python 3, HDA (High Definition Audio) support for newer Linux guests, various VMM improvements, and many other improvements and bug-fixes.

Here are the full changes from the Virutalbox Changlog:

New Features:

• VMM: new APIC and I/O APIC implementations that result in significantly improved performance in certain situations (for example with networking)
• VMM: added support for Hyper-V paravirtualized debugging of Windows guests
• VMM: emulate even more MMIO and shadow pagetable exits without going back to user mode
• GUI: overall migration to Qt5
• GUI: passive API event listener improving the VM GUI performance and response time
• Audio: added HDA (High Definition Audio) support for newer Linux guests
• Audio: added on-demand timers which should improve the overall performance and reduce the CPU consumption
• Audio: more fine-grained volume control for the AC’97 emulation, which now also takes the master volume control into account
• better support for Python 3

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

• VMM: activate the x2APIC by default for Linux guests
• VMM: many more fixes
• GUI: the Detach UI action is now a part of the VM Machine menu
• GUI: reworked session information window
• GUI: the new VM wizard now allows to choose the VM location for the VM which is being created
• GUI: fixed location of touch events in unscaled HiDPI mode
• GUI: various bugfixes and internal cleanup
• Storage: use fallocate() or similar if present to speed up creating fixed-sized disk images
• Storage: implemented NVMHCI-compatible storage controller
• Audio: various bugfixes and infrastructure improvements
• E1000: implemented interrupt throttling for performance improvements
• EFI: many improvements, for example allow to boot from USB
• OVF: improved handling of signed manifests
• API: Windows XP guests and Windows 2003 server guests now default to the E1000 T Server network card
• VBoxSVC: fixed several memory leaks when handling .dmg images
• Installers: ship VBoxBugReport
• Windows hosts: reworked COM proxy
• Linux installers: no longer rely on DKMS for module rebuilding
• Linux Additions: fix a problem when updating the initramfs after the guest modules are compiled
• Linux Additions: try to fix a problem where the OpenGL libraries where loaded by the X server when we only support X clients

Download & Install Virtualbox 5.1:

The Linux binary for Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04, and their derivatives are available for download at the link below:

Download Virtualbox for Linux

Download the package matches your OS and click install via Ubuntu Software

To install Virtualbox 5.1 using official Linux repository:

1. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T), paste the command and run:

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian xenial contrib" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/virtualbox.list'

Depends on your Ubuntu edition, replace xenial by wily (for 15.10), trusty (for 14.04, Mint 17.x, eOS 0.3), or precise (for 12.04).

2. Install the key via:

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox_2016.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

For Ubuntu 15.10 and older, use this one instead:

wget -q https://www.virtualbox.org/download/oracle_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -

3. Finally update and install VBox 5.1:

sudo apt update

sudo apt install virtualbox-5.1