Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and InnoTek VirtualBox) is a hosted hypervisor for

x86 virtualization x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware ...

developed by

Oracle Corporation Oracle Corporation is an American Multinational corporation, multinational computer technology company headquartered in Austin, Texas. Co-founded in 1977 in Santa Clara, California, by Larry Ellison, who remains executive chairman, Oracle was ...

. VirtualBox was originally created by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, which was acquired by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

in 2008, which was in turn acquired by Oracle in 2010. VirtualBox may be installed on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, Solaris and

OpenSolaris OpenSolaris () is a discontinued open-source computer operating system for SPARC and x86 based systems, created by Sun Microsystems and based on Solaris. Its development began in the mid 2000s and ended in 2010. OpenSolaris was developed as ...

. There are also ports to

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and Genode. It supports the creation and management of guest

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization or emulator, emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve ...

s running Windows, Linux,

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

, Solaris,

Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

, and

OSx86 A hackintosh (, a portmanteau of "Hacker, Hack" and "Macintosh") is a computer that runs Apple Inc., Apple's operating system macOS on computer hardware that is not authorized for the purpose by Apple. This is due to the software license for ma ...

, as well as limited virtualization of guests on Apple hardware. For some guest operating systems, a "Guest Additions" package of device drivers and system applications is available, which typically improves performance, especially that of graphics, and allows changing the resolution of the guest OS automatically when the window of the virtual machine on the host OS is resized. Released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and, optionally, the

CDDL The Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL) is a free and open-source software license, produced by Sun Microsystems, based on the Mozilla Public License (MPL). Files licensed under the CDDL can be combined with files licensed under o ...

for most files of the source distribution, VirtualBox is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

, though the Extension Pack is

proprietary software Proprietary software is computer software, software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing t ...

, free of charge only to personal users. The License to VirtualBox was relicensed to GPLv3 with linking exceptions to the CDDL and other GPL-incompatible licenses.

History

VirtualBox was first offered by InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, a German company based in

Weinstadt Weinstadt (, ; Swabian German, Swabian: ''Waistadt'') is a town in the Rems-Murr district, in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is located in the Rems (river), Rems Valley approximately 15 km east of Stuttgart. Its population in 201 ...

, under a

license, making one version of the product available at no cost for personal or evaluation use, subject to the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). In January 2007, based on counsel by LiSoG, InnoTek released VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE) as

, subject to the requirements of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL), version 2. InnoTek also contributed to the development of

and

support in virtualization and OS/2 ports of products from

Connectix Connectix Corporation was a software and hardware company that released innovative products that were either made obsolete as Apple Computer incorporated the ideas into system software, or were sold to other companies once they became popular. It ...

which were later acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

. Specifically, InnoTek developed the "additions" code in both

Windows Virtual PC Virtual PC is a discontinued x86 emulator software for Microsoft Windows hosts and PowerPC-based Mac hosts. It was created by Connectix in 1997 and acquired by Microsoft in 2003, after which the program was renamed Microsoft Virtual PC. In ...

and

Microsoft Virtual Server Microsoft Virtual Server was a virtualization solution that facilitated the creation of virtual machines on the Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 operating systems. Originally developed by Connectix, it was acquired by Microsoft pri ...

, which enables various host–guest OS interactions like shared clipboards or dynamic viewport resizing.

acquired InnoTek in February 2008. Following the

acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation The acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle Corporation was completed on January 27, 2010. After the acquisition was completed, Oracle, only a software vendor prior to the merger, owned Sun's hardware product lines, such as SPARC Enterprise, a ...

in January 2010, the product was re-branded as "Oracle VM VirtualBox". In December 2019, VirtualBox removed support for software-based virtualization and exclusively performs

hardware-assisted virtualization In computing, virtualization (abbreviated v12n) is a series of technologies that allows dividing of physical computing resources into a series of virtual machines, operating systems, processes or containers. Virtualization began in the 1960s with ...

Release history

;

Licensing

The core package, since version 4 in December 2010, is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

under GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). A supplementary package, under a proprietary license, adds support for

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

2.0 and 3.0 devices,

Remote Desktop Protocol Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft Corporation which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this pu ...

(RDP), disk encryption,

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...

, and

Preboot Execution Environment In computing, the Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE; often pronounced as ''pixie''), often called PXE boot (''pixie boot''), is a specification describing a standardized client–server environment that boots a software assembly, retrieved ...

(PXE). This package is called "VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox extension pack". It includes closed-source components, so it is not

source-available Source-available software is software released through a source code distribution model that includes arrangements where the source can be viewed, and in some cases modified, but without necessarily meeting the criteria to be called ''open-source ...

. The license is called ''Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL)''. It allows gratis access for personal use, educational use, and evaluation. Since VirtualBox version 5.1.30, Oracle defines personal use as installation on a single computer for non-commercial purposes. Prior to version 4, there were two different packages of the VirtualBox software. The full package was offered gratis under the PUEL, with licenses for other commercial deployment purchasable from Oracle. A second package called the ''VirtualBox Open Source Edition (OSE)'' was released under GPLv2. This removed the same proprietary components not available under GPLv2. , building the

BIOS In computing, BIOS (, ; Basic Input/Output System, also known as the System BIOS, ROM BIOS, BIOS ROM or PC BIOS) is a type of firmware used to provide runtime services for operating systems and programs and to perform hardware initialization d ...

for VirtualBox requires the Open Watcom compiler, which is released under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License. The

Open Source Initiative The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is a California public benefit corporation "actively involved in Open Source community-building, education, and public advocacy to promote awareness and the importance of non-proprietary software". Governance The ...

has approved this as "Open Source" but the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

and the

Debian Free Software Guidelines ''The Open Source Definition'' (OSD) is a policy document published by the Open Source Initiative. Derived from the Debian Free Software Guidelines written by Bruce Perens, the definition is the most common standard for open-source software. ...

do not consider it "free". VirtualBox has experimental support for macOS guests. However, macOS's

end user license agreement An end-user license agreement or EULA () is a legal contract between a software supplier and a customer or end-user. The practice of selling licenses to rather than copies of software predates the recognition of software copyright, which has b ...

does not permit running on non-Apple hardware. The operating system enforces this by calling the Apple System Management Controller (SMC), to verify the hardware's authenticity. All Apple machines have an SMC.

Virtualization

Users of VirtualBox can load multiple guest OSes under a single host operating-system (host OS). Each guest can be started, paused and stopped independently within its own

(VM). The user can independently configure each VM and run it under a choice of software-based virtualization or hardware assisted virtualization if the underlying host hardware supports this. The host OS and guest OSs and applications can communicate with each other through a number of mechanisms including a common clipboard and a virtualized network facility. Guest VMs can also directly communicate with each other if configured to do so.

Hardware-assisted

VirtualBox supports both

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

VT-x x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware-a ...

and

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

AMD-V x86 virtualization is the use of hardware-assisted virtualization capabilities on an x86/x86-64 CPU. In the late 1990s x86 virtualization was achieved by complex software techniques, necessary to compensate for the processor's lack of hardware- ...

hardware-assisted virtualization. Making use of these facilities, VirtualBox can run each guest VM in its own separate address-space; the guest OS ring 0 code runs on the host at ring 0 in VMX non-root mode rather than in ring 1. Starting with version 6.1, VirtualBox only supports this method. Until then, VirtualBox specifically supported some guests (including 64-bit guests, SMP guests and certain proprietary OSs) only on hosts with

Devices and peripherals

VirtualBox emulates hard disks in three formats: the native ''VDI'' (Virtual Disk Image), VMware's VMDK, and

's VHD. It thus supports disks created by other hypervisor software. VirtualBox can also connect to

iSCSI Internet Small Computer Systems Interface or iSCSI ( ) is an Internet Protocol-based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. iSCSI provides block-level access to storage devices by carrying SCSI commands over a TCP/IP ...

targets and to raw partitions on the host, using either as virtual hard disks. VirtualBox emulates IDE (PIIX4 and ICH6 controllers),

SCSI Small Computer System Interface (SCSI, ) is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices, best known for its use with storage devices such as hard disk drives. SCSI was introduced ...

SATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PATA) standard ...

(ICH8M controller), and SAS controllers, to which hard drives can be attached. VirtualBox has supported

Open Virtualization Format Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open standard for packaging and distributing virtual appliances or, more generally, software to be run in virtual machines. The standard describes an "open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format ...

(OVF) since version 2.2.0 (April 2009). Both

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. IS ...

s and physical devices connected to the host can be mounted as CD or DVD drives. VirtualBox supports running operating systems from live CDs and DVDs. By default, VirtualBox provides graphics support through a custom virtual graphics-card that is VBE or

UEFI GOP Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI, as an acronym) is a specification for the firmware architecture of a computing platform. When a computer is powered on, the UEFI implementation is typically the first that runs, before starting th ...

compatible. The Guest Additions for Windows, Linux, Solaris, OpenSolaris, and OS/2 guests include a special video-driver that increases video performance and includes additional features, such as automatically adjusting the guest resolution when resizing the VM window and desktop composition via virtualized WDDM drivers. For an

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

network adapter, VirtualBox virtualizes these Network Interface Cards: * AMD PCnet PCI II (Am79C970A) * AMD PCnet-Fast III (Am79C973) * Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop (82540EM) * Intel Pro/1000 MT Server (82545EM) * Intel Pro/1000 T Server (82543GC) * Paravirtualized network adapter (virtio-net) The emulated network cards allow most guest OSs to run without the need to find and install drivers for networking hardware as they are shipped as part of the guest OS. A special paravirtualized network adapter is also available, which improves network performance by eliminating the need to match a specific hardware interface, but requires special driver support in the guest. (Many distributions of

ship with this driver included.) By default, VirtualBox uses NAT through which Internet software for end-users such as

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

or ssh can operate. Bridged networking via a host network adapter or virtual networks between guests can also be configured. Up to 36 network adapters can be attached simultaneously, but only four are configurable through the graphical interface. For a sound card, VirtualBox virtualizes Intel HD Audio, Intel ICH AC'97, and SoundBlaster 16 devices. A USB 1.1 controller is emulated, so that any USB devices attached to the host can be seen in the guest. The proprietary extension pack adds a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 controller and, if VirtualBox acts as an RDP server, it can also use USB devices on the remote RDP client, as if they were connected to the host, although only if the client supports this VirtualBox-specific extension (Oracle provides clients for Solaris, Linux, and Sun Ray thin clients that can do this, and has promised support for other platforms in future versions).

Software-based

In the absence of hardware-assisted virtualization, versions 6.0.24 and earlier of VirtualBox could adopt a standard software-based virtualization approach. This mode supports 32-bit guest operating systems which run in rings 0 and 3 of the Intel

ring (The) Ring(s) may refer to: * Ring (jewellery), a round band, usually made of metal, worn as ornamental jewelry * To make a sound with a bell, and the sound made by a bell Arts, entertainment, and media Film and TV * ''The Ring'' (franchise), a ...

architecture. * The system reconfigures the guest OS code, which would normally run in ring 0, to execute in ring 1 on the host hardware. Because this code contains many privileged instructions which cannot run natively in ring 1, VirtualBox employs a Code Scanning and Analysis Manager (CSAM) to scan the ring 0 code recursively before its first execution to identify problematic instructions and then calls the Patch Manager (PATM) to perform ''in-situ'' patching. This replaces the instruction with a jump to a VM-safe equivalent compiled code fragment in hypervisor memory. * The guest user-mode code, running in ring 3, generally runs directly on the host hardware in ring 3. In both cases, VirtualBox uses CSAM and PATM to inspect and patch the offending instructions whenever a fault occurs. VirtualBox also contains a dynamic recompiler, based on

QEMU The Quick Emulator (QEMU) is a free and open-source emulator that uses dynamic binary translation to emulate a computer's processor; that is, it translates the emulated binary codes to an equivalent binary format which is executed by the mach ...

to recompile any

real mode Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of all x86-compatible CPUs. The mode gets its name from the fact that addresses in real mode always correspond to real locations in memory. Real mode is characterized by a 20- bit s ...

protected mode In computing, protected mode, also called protected virtual address mode, is an operational mode of x86-compatible central processing units (CPUs). It allows system software to use features such as Memory_segmentation, segmentation, virtual mem ...

code entirely (e.g. BIOS code, a DOS guest, or any operating system startup). Using these techniques, VirtualBox could achieve performance comparable to that of VMware in its later versions. The feature was dropped starting with VirtualBox 6.1.

Features

* Snapshots of the RAM and storage that allow reverting to a prior state. *

Screenshot A screenshot (also known as screen capture or screen grab) is an analog or digital image that shows the contents of a computer display. A screenshot is created by a (film) camera shooting the screen or the operating system An operating sys ...

s and screen video capture * "Host key" for releasing the keyboard and mouse cursor to the host system if captured (coupled) to the guest system, and for keyboard shortcuts to features such as configuration, restarting, and screenshot. By default, it is the right-side key, or on Mac, the left key. * Mouse pointer integration, meaning automatic coupling and uncoupling of mouse cursor when moved inside and outside the virtual screen, if supported by guest operating system. * Seamless mode – the ability to run virtualized applications side by side with normal desktop applications * Shared clipboard * Shared folders through "guest additions" software * Special drivers and utilities to facilitate switching between systems * Ability to specify amount of shared RAM, video memory, and CPU execution cap * Ability to emulate multiple screens *

Command line A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via command (computing), commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user ...

interaction (in addition to the GUI) * Public API (

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

, Python,

SOAP Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...

XPCOM Cross Platform Component Object Model (XPCOM) is a cross-platform component model from Mozilla. It is similar to Component Object Model (COM), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and system object model (SOM). It features multiple ...

) to control VM configuration and execution * Nested

paging In computer operating systems, memory paging is a memory management scheme that allows the physical Computer memory, memory used by a program to be non-contiguous. This also helps avoid the problem of memory fragmentation and requiring compact ...

for

and Intel VT (only for processors supporting SLAT and with SLAT enabled) * Limited support for

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for the purposes of perfor ...

acceleration (including

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

up to (but not including) 3.0 and

Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware ...

9.0c via

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

's Direct3D to OpenGL translation in versions prior to 7.0 or DXVK in later releases) * SMP support (up to 32 virtual CPUs per virtual machine), since version 3.0 * Teleportation (aka Live Migration) * 2D video output acceleration (not to be mistaken with video decoding acceleration), since version 3.1 * EFI has been supported since version 3.1 (Windows 7 guests are not supported)

Storage emulation

* Ability to mount virtual hard disk drives and

disk image A disk image is a snapshot of a storage device's content typically stored in a file on another storage device. Traditionally, a disk image was relatively large because it was a bit-by-bit copy of every storage location of a device (i.e. every ...

s. Virtual

optical disc An optical disc is a flat, usuallyNon-circular optical discs exist for fashion purposes; see shaped compact disc. disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid o ...

images can be used for booting and sharing files to guest systems lacking networking support. * NCQ support for

and SAS raw disks and partitions * SATA disk hotplugging * Pass-through mode for solid-state drives * Pass-through mode for CD/DVD/BD drives – allows users to play audio CDs, burn optical disks, and play encrypted DVD discs * Can disable host OS I/O cache * Allows limitation of IO

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

* PATA,

, SAS,

floppy disk A floppy disk or floppy diskette (casually referred to as a floppy, a diskette, or a disk) is a type of disk storage composed of a thin and flexible disk of a magnetic storage medium in a square or nearly square plastic enclosure lined with a ...

controllers * VM disk image encryption using AES128/AES256 Storage support includes: * Raw hard disk access – allows physical hard disk partitions on the host system to appear in the guest system * VMware Virtual Machine Disk ( VMDK) format support – allows exchange of disk images with VMware * Microsoft VHD support *

qed and qcow disks * HDD format disks (only version 2; versions 3 and 4 are not supported) used by Parallels virtualization products

Limitations

* 3D graphics acceleration for Windows guests earlier than Windows 7 was removed in version 6.1. This affected Windows XP and Windows Vista. * VirtualBox has a very low transfer rate to and from USB2 devices. * For USB3 equipment, device pass-through does not work in older guest OSes, such as

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

, which lack appropriate drivers. However, since version 5.0, VirtualBox has added an experimental USB3 controller (the Renesas uPD720201 xHCI), which enables USB3 in these operating systems. This requires editing some configuration files. * Guest Additions for

are unavailable at this time. * Native Guest Additions for

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a line of discontinued Microsoft Windows operating systems released from 1995 to 2000 and supported until 2006, which were based on the kernel introduced in Windows 95 and modified in succeeding version ...

(

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

, 98 and ME) are not available. This results in poor performance due to the lack of graphics acceleration with the default limited color depth. External third-party software is available to enable support for 32-bit color mode, resulting in better performance. * EFI support is incomplete, e.g. EFI boot for a Windows 7 guest is not supported. * Only older versions of

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

and

pass-through are supported (the feature can be enabled using the 3D Acceleration option for each VM individually). *

Video RAM Video random-access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. It often uses a different technology than other computer memory, in order to b ...

is limited to 128

MiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable un ...

(256

with 2D Video Acceleration enabled) due to technical difficulties (merely changing the GUI to allow the user to allocate more

video RAM Video random-access memory (VRAM) is dedicated computer memory used to store the pixels and other graphics data as a framebuffer to be rendered on a computer monitor. It often uses a different technology than other computer memory, in order to b ...

to a VM or manually editing the

configuration file A configuration file, a.k.a. config file, is a computer file, file that stores computer data, data used to configure a software system such as an application software, application, a server (computing), server or an operating system. Some applic ...

of a VM won't work and will result in a fatal error). * Windows 95/98/98SE/ME cannot be installed or work unreliably with modern CPUs (AMD

Zen Zen (; from Chinese: ''Chán''; in Korean: ''Sŏn'', and Vietnamese: ''Thiền'') is a Mahayana Buddhist tradition that developed in China during the Tang dynasty by blending Indian Mahayana Buddhism, particularly Yogacara and Madhyamaka phil ...

and newer; Intel Tiger Lake and newer) and hardware assisted virtualization (VirtualBox 6.1 and higher). This is due to these OSes not being coded correctly. An open source patch has been developed to fix the issue which also addresses Windows 95/98/98SE bug which makes the system crash when running on new fast CPUs. *VirtualBox 7.0 and later is required to run a pristine Windows 11 guest. Full compatibility with Windows 11 is achieved in VirtualBox version 7.0.14 and higher.

Host OS

The supported operating systems include: * *

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

64-bit and higher. Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5. Support for 32-bit Windows was removed in 6.0. ** Support for Windows 2000 was removed in version 1.6. ** Support for Windows XP was removed in version 5.0. ** Support for Windows Vista was removed in version 5.2. ** Support for Windows 7 (64-bit) was removed in version 6.1. ** Support for Windows 8 (64-bit) was removed in version 7.0. ** Support for Windows 8.1 (64-bit) was removed in version 7.1. *

Windows Server 2019 Windows Server 2019 is the twelfth major version of the Windows NT operating system produced by Microsoft to be released under the Windows Server brand name. It is the second version of the server operating system based on the Windows 10 plat ...

and higher. ** Support for Windows Server 2003 was removed in 5.0. ** Support for Windows Server 2008 was removed in 6.0. ** Support for Windows Server 2008 R2 was removed in version 7.0. ** Support for Windows Server 2012 and 2016 was removed in version 7.1. *

Linux distribution A Linux distribution, often abbreviated as distro, is an operating system that includes the Linux kernel for its kernel functionality. Although the name does not imply product distribution per se, a distro—if distributed on its own—is oft ...

s *

from version 11 (

Big Sur Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast (California), Central Coast of the U.S. state of California, between Carmel Highlands and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Range, Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from th ...

) to 14 ( Sonoma) both ARM and

versions: ** Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and earlier was removed with VirtualBox 3.1. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) was removed with VirtualBox 4.2. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion) was removed with VirtualBox 5.0. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) was removed with VirtualBox 5.1. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) was removed with VirtualBox 5.2. ** Support for Mac OS X 10.10 (Yosemite) and OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) was removed with VirtualBox 6.0. ** Support for macOS 10.12 (Sierra) was officially removed with VirtualBox 6.1 ''(as of 6.1.16 it will still install and run, however).'' ** Support for macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) and macOS 10.14 (Mojave) was officially removed with VirtualBox 7.0. ** Support for macOS 10.15 (Catalina) was officially removed with VirtualBox 7.1. *

Oracle Solaris Oracle Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system offered by Oracle for SPARC and x86-64 based workstations and servers. Originally developed by Sun Microsystems as Solaris, it superseded the company's earlier SunOS in 1993 and became kno ...

Guest additions

Some features require the installation of the

closed-source Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modi ...

"VirtualBox Extension Pack": * Support for a virtual

2.0/3.0 controller (EHCI/xHCI) (Starting with VirtualBox 7.0, this functionality was integrated into the GPL version instead.) * VirtualBox

RDP RDP may refer to: Computing * Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm, an algorithm for polygonal simplification * Recombination detection program, for analysing genetic recombination * Recursive descent parser, a type of top-down parser * Remote Desk ...

: support for the proprietary remote connection protocol developed by Microsoft and Citrix Systems. *

PXE PXE may refer to: Science and technology * Pentium Extreme Edition, a variant of the Pentium D microprocessor * Preboot Execution Environment, booting computers via a network * Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a genetic disease Other uses * Proof and Exp ...

boot for Intel cards. * VM disk image encryption *

Webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

support While VirtualBox itself is free to use and is distributed under an open source license the VirtualBox Extension Pack is licensed under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). Personal use of the extension pack is free but commercial users need to purchase a license. Guest Additions are installed within each guest virtual machine which supports them; the Extension Pack is installed on the host running VirtualBox.

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* * {{Authority control Articles containing video clips Cross-platform free software Free emulation software Free software programmed in C++ Free virtualization software Platform virtualization software Icon software Software derived from or incorporating Wine Software that uses Qt Sun Microsystems software Virtualization software for Linux Cloud infrastructure Oracle Cloud Services 2007 software