VirtualBox

Description

Running two operating systems on one computer used to mean one of three things: buying a second machine, rebooting each time you needed to switch between them or paying for enterprise virtualization software priced for corporate IT budgets. VirtualBox changed that equation. Released as open-source software in January 2007 by a small German company called InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH, it placed full virtual machine capabilities on a developer’s laptop computer for free – a proposition that had no real precedent in the consumer market at the time.

VirtualBox allows a computer running Windows, macOS, Linux or Solaris to create and execute additional guest operating systems within isolated virtual machines, all at the same time, without having to touch the host system’s own environment. A developer can run Linux on a Windows machine to test deployment scripts, a student can experiment with an unfamiliar operating system without endangering their main setup, and a security researcher can detonate suspicious files within a throwaway virtual environment. Each virtual machine acts like a separate computer with its own allocated CPU cores, memory, storage, and network adapters, and the host machine continues running around it normally.

Oracle acquired VirtualBox with its purchase of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and has been maintaining it ever since. The core package is still free and open-source under GPLv2. Version 7.2, released August 2025, introduced full ARM virtualization on Windows ARM hosts and experimental 3D acceleration on Apple Silicon Macs, bringing VirtualBox into line with the move to ARM-based consumer hardware.

HISTORY AND BACKGROUND

InnoTek Systemberatung GmbH was a consulting and software company in Weinstadt, near Stuttgart, Germany. Achim Hasenmueller was the general manager of the company. InnoTek spent its early years supporting enterprises still dependent on OS/2 — the operating system that IBM had developed with Microsoft that many banks and industrial organizations ran well into the 2000s. Virtualization provided those clients with a way to continue running legacy OS/2 applications on new hardware without having to replace entire software stacks. InnoTek developed a great deal of expertise in this area and contributed the Guest Additions code that enables host-guest interactions in both Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server — the shared clipboard, dynamic screen resizing, and mouse integration that make working inside a virtual machine practical.

InnoTek released VirtualBox on January 17, 2007. The first version was designed to run on Windows and Linux hosts and supported Windows, Linux, and OS/2 as guest operating systems. InnoTek provided VirtualBox under a dual license – a commercial version with all features, and a free binary release for personal and evaluation use under the VirtualBox Personal Use and Evaluation License (PUEL). The same month, after advice from LiSoG, the Linux Solutions Group, InnoTek released the VirtualBox Open Source Edition under GPLv2, which made the core codebase freely available to modify and redistribute. This decision set VirtualBox apart from all its major competitors: VMware charged for its desktop products, Microsoft’s Virtual PC only ran on Windows hosts, and Parallels was only interested in Mac users at a premium. A fully capable, open-source virtual machine manager on multiple host platforms did not previously exist.

Sun Microsystems bought InnoTek in February, 2008. Sun rebranded the product as Sun xVM VirtualBox, and added Solaris and macOS host support in version 1.6 that April. Version 2.0 was released September 2008, which added 64-bit guest support. Sun continued active development and increased the number of users significantly before Oracle Corporation completed its $7.4 billion acquisition of Sun on January 27, 2010. Oracle rebranded the product Oracle VM VirtualBox from version 3.1.4. Version 4.0, released December 2010, restructured the licensing by placing the core package entirely under GPLv2, and segregating proprietary features into the Extension Pack — the division that exists today. In December 2019, VirtualBox completely abandoned software-based virtualization, and requires hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD-V) from all host machines. This reflected the near-universal availability of hardware virtualization support in consumer CPUs by this time.

Version 7.0, released October 2022, added first Apple Silicon support. Version 7.1, released September 2024, added ARM host and guest support and an experience level selector — a Basic mode, which hides the advanced configuration for simpler configurations, and an Experienced mode, which exposes the full depth of the settings. Version 7.2, released August 2025, finalized ARM virtualization for Windows ARM hosts, added experimental 3D acceleration via the DXMT translation layer on Apple Silicon Macs, moved NVMe storage controller and USB webcam passthrough to the open-source base package, and reworked the interface with a persistent sidebar and tabbed VM tools panel. Since version 7.1, Oracle removed the “VM” from the name; the product is known as Oracle VirtualBox.

KEY FEATURES

VirtualBox runs as a Type 2 hypervisor — hosted virtualization — which means that it runs as an application on top of an existing host operating system rather than directly on bare metal. It currently supports Windows, macOS, Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris as host platforms, with community maintained ports to FreeBSD and Genode. Guest operating systems include all major versions of Windows from Windows XP onwards, most versions of Linux, BSD variants, OS/2 and its successors eComStation and ArcaOS, Solaris, Haiku, and limited support for macOS on Apple hardware under certain conditions.

Each virtual machine receives its own set of allocated CPU cores, RAM, virtual storage drives and network interfaces. VirtualBox emulates various hardware: Intel and AMD CPUs with configurable feature sets, various types of chipsets (PIIX3 and ICH9), IDE, SATA, SCSI, SAS, NVMe and virtio storage controllers, and a choice of network adapter models which includes Intel and AMD network adapters as well as paravirtualized virtio network adapters which offer better performance by reducing the hardware simulation overhead. USB passthrough enables host USB devices — including mass storage, webcams and HID devices — to connect directly to a guest. USB 2.0 and 3.0 passthrough requires the Extension Pack.

Snapshots allow users to capture a snapshot of the entire state of a virtual machine — its memory contents, running processes and all virtual disk data — at any point in time and return to that state at a later time. This makes VirtualBox especially useful for software testing, OS experimentation and malware analysis, where being able to return to a known-good state in seconds eliminates the danger from destructive operations. Multiple snapshot branches enable multiple experimental routes from the same base state.

Guest Additions — a package of drivers and utilities installed inside the guest operating system — greatly enhances the virtual machine experience. With Guest Additions installed the guest screen resolution automatically adjusts when the VirtualBox window is resized, the mouse pointer moves freely between host and guest without the need for a dedicated release key, the clipboard is bidirectional, and drag and drop file transfers work between the host desktop and guest. Shared Folders allow specified directories on the host to be mounted as drives within the guest. Since version 7.2, shared folders can be set as global, so they are available on all virtual machines instead of setting them for each VM.

VirtualBox supports six modes of networking per virtual adapter. NAT connects the guest to the internet through the connection of the host without any configuration. NAT Network extends this to allow multiple VMs on the same virtual network to communicate with each other. Bridged networking is a connection between the guest and the physical network as if it were a separate physical machine with its own IP address. Internal Network creates an isolated virtual network that is visible only to selected VMs. Host-Only networking is a network between the host and its VMs with no internet access. Generic drivers provide a pluggable interface for special network configurations.

The Extension Pack provides additional functionality over the open-source base. These include RDP remote display — which enables users to connect to a running virtual machine from another computer using standard Remote Desktop Protocol clients — and USB 2.0 and 3.0 device passthrough. The Extension Pack has a proprietary license, free for personal use, but requiring a commercial license for business deployment.

VirtualBox Manager, the graphical interface, was significantly redesigned in version 7.1 and improved further in 7.2. Global configuration tools and VM-specific tools are now in a persistent sidebar and tabbed panel instead of hamburger menus, which is faster for users managing multiple machines. The command-line interface VBoxManage offers full programmatic control over all VirtualBox functions and supports scripted VM creation, configuration, and lifecycle management — the interface most developers and system administrators use for automated workflows.