Virtualize an operating system on a different platform and access all its functions and features. Access configuration settings and check the "virtual" hardware presented to each simulated system. Integrate older systems into modern computers, like a DOS module for Windows or OS/2 elements.
VirtualBox is an open source application to manage and run virtual machines. If you ever need to run a virtual (guest) operating system on your host machine that runs Windows, Linux, Mac OS X or Solaris operating system, you should check this program out. It is absolute free but includes almost all the features that the modern virtual machines must have.
Innotek, the original developer of the software was bought out by Sun Microsystems. In early 2010, one of the top 100 Fortune companies, Oracle, bought out Sun and is now the current development curator of this application.
Given the open source nature of the software, it is expected that it is available for multiple platforms. One can download the program for absolutely free from the program's website. One can also find an extension pack available for a free download that enables the support of USB 2.0 and other technologies under guest operating system.
There are some bugs here and there, but if you check out the development logs, you can see that the developers address those bugs pretty quickly in hopes that they won't loose the already existing valuable customer base. There were only 5 months in between two major releases, so you can see that the ball is rolling and the application is not abandoned but evolving.
As far as the features go, the virtual machine market is very saturated with open source application, hence all of the VM developers are trying to keep up with the latest trends, giving the customers support for the latest technology. VirtualBox supports VT-x and AMD-v, therefore increasing the execution speed of your guest operating system. No word on supporting of VT-d, but I am sure it is coming in the near future, as the chips with that extension catch up the market. Keep in mind that using VirtualBox gives you an edge as it supports other virtual machine's hard drive images, such as VMWare's and Microsoft's, while the relationship is reciprocal due to close source nature of VMWare and Microsoft's products.
Overall, this application is one of the leaders on the market for virtualization. Its open- source nature gives it an edge over the closed source applications in regards to implementing the newest code and technologies.
v5.1.38 [Jun 5, 2016]
GUI: fixed keyboard shortcut handling regressions (Mac OS X hosts only; bugs #15937 and #15938)
GUI: fixed keyboard handling regression for separate UI (Windows hosts only; bugs #15928)
NAT: don't exceed the maximum number of "search" suffixes. Patch from bug #15948.
NAT: fixed parsing of port-forwarding rules with a name which contains a slash (bug #16002)
NAT Network: when the host has only loopback nameserver that cannot be mapped to the guests (e.g. dnsmasq running on 127.0.1.1), make DHCP supply NAT Network DNS proxy as nameserver.
Bridged Network: prevent flooding syslog with packet allocation error messages (bug #15569)
Audio: now using Audio Queues on Mac OS X hosts
Audio: fixed recording with the PulseAudio backend (5.1 regression)
Audio: various bugfixes
Snapshots: fixed regression in 5.1.4 for deleting snapshots with several disks (bug #15831)
Snapshots: crash fix and better error reporting when snapshot deletion failed
Storage: some fixes for the NVMe emulation with Windows guests
API: fixed initialization of SAS controllers (bug #15972)
Build system: make it possible to build VBox on systems which default to Python 3
Windows hosts: detect certain cases of REGDB_E_CLASSNOTREG errors and print a helpful error message
Windows hosts: adapted to changes in Windows 10 build 14901 (bug #15944)
Windows hosts: better support for processor groups on Windows 7 and later which is required on certain hosts with many CPUs
Windows installer / Additions: added option to prevent creating of start menu items (bug #15922)
Windows Additions / VGA: if the guest's power management turns a virtual screen off, blank the corresponding VM window rather than hide the window
Windows Additions: fixed a generic bug which could lead to freezing shared folders (bug #15662)
Linux hosts / guests: fix for kernels with CONFIG_CPUMASK_OFFSTACK set (bug #16020)
Linux Additions: don't require all virtual consoles be in text mode. This should fix cases when the guest is booted with a graphical boot screen (bug #15683)
Linux Additions: added depmod overrides for the vboxguest and vboxsf kernel modules to fix conflicts with modules shipped by certain Linux distributions
X11 Additions: disable 3D on the guest if the host does not provide enough capabilities (bug #15860)
Mall Creeps
