VirtualBox 5.1 debuts

Well that was quick. Mere days after announcing a release candidate, Oracle has emitted VirtualBox 5.1

Big Red reckons the following new features are worth getting excited about:

• Improved Performance: Significantly improved performance for multi-CPU virtual machines and networking.
• Bug Reporting Tool: New utility able to collect all the information and logs related to the host and guest operating system, for debug or analysis purposes.
• Improved Logging Window: New logging functionalities to highlight and filter information related to guest Virtual Machines.
• Improved multimedia availability: Improved support for different USB devices and multi-channel audio availability.
• Flash storage emulation: New NVMHCI storage controller emulation available, able to emulate NVME devices - Flash storage - on guest Virtual Machine.
• Improved Linux integration: Automatic modules deployment in case of a Linux Kernel upgrade and improved systemd integration for the latest releases of popular Linux distributions.

VMware usually releases updates to its desktop hypervisors at VMworld, which this year takes place in late August. If that pattern holds, the small group of folks who care about the competing merits of desktop hypervisors will have something to chew over. ®