- The Oracle team announced the release of VirtualBox 6.1.36, a maintenance release with various bug fixes and enhancements.
- The latest version supports Linux Kernel 5.18 and the upcoming Linux Kernel 5.19, which is set to release next week.
- VirtualBox 6.1.36 is released approximately 4 months after the release of VirtualBox 6.1.34, which was released in March.
Four months after the release of VirtualBox 6.1.34, Oracle announced the release of the latest stable version, VirtualBox 6.1.36. The new version not only comes with the initial support for Linux Kernel 5.18 but also supports the upcoming Linux Kernel 5.19, allowing users to install GNU/Linux distributions using Linux Kernels 5.18 and 5.19 and installing VirtualBox on a GNU/Linux distribution comes with these kernel branches.
RHEL 9.1 and Python 3.10 support
VirtualBox 6.1.36 also comes with important enhancements, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.1 and Python 3.10 support. The latest version also allows users to mount shared folders that are represented as symlink. It also prevents kernel modules from being rebuilt if it is not necessary to reduce the boot time of virtual guests. Some of the other changes are:
- VMM: Fixed possible Linux guest kernel crash when configuring Speculative Store Bypass for a single vCPU VM
- GUI: In the storage page of the virtual machine settings dialog, fixed a bug which disrupted mouse interaction with the native file selector on KDE
- NAT: Prevent issue when host resolver incorrectly returned NXDOMAIN for unsupported queries
- Audio: General improvements in saved state area
- Recording: Various fixes for settings handling
- VGA: Performance improvements for screen updates when VBE banking is used
- USB: Fixed rare crashes when detaching a USB device
- ATA: Fixed NT4 guests taking a minute to eject CDs
- vboximg-mount: Fixed broken write support
- SDK: Fixed Python bindings incorrectly trying to convert arbitrary byte data into unicode objects with Python 3, causing exceptions
- API: Fixed an issue when virtual USB mass storage devices or virtual USB DVD drives are added while the VM is not running are by default not marked as hot-pluggable
- API: Initial support for Python 3.10
- API: Solaris OS types cleanup
- Windows host: Fixed regression in 6.1.32 leading to guest hangs when Hyper-V is used
- Windows host: Fixed possible issues with saving and restoring VM state when using Hyper-V/NEM mode
- Linux and Solaris hosts: Allow to mount shared folder if it is represented as a symlink on a host side
- Linux Host and Guest drivers: Introduced initial support for kernels 5.18, 5.19 and RHEL 9.1
- Linux Host and Guest drivers: Better support for kernels built with clang compiler
- Solaris Guest Additions: General improvements in installer area
- Solaris Guest Additions: Fixed guest screen resize in VMSVGA graphics configuration
- Linux and Solaris Guest Additions: Fixed multi-screen handling in VBoxVGA and VBoxSVGA graphics configuration
- Linux and Solaris Guest Additions: Added support for setting primary screen via VBoxManage
- Linux and Solaris Guest Additions: Fixed X11 resources leak when resizing guest screens
- Linux and Solaris Guest Additions: Fixed file descriptor leak when starting a process using guest control
- Linux and Solaris Guest Additions: Fixed guest control executing processes as root
- Linux Guest Additions: Improved guests booting time by preventing kernel modules from being rebuilt when it is not necessary
- Windows Guest Additions: Fixed VBoxTray crash on startup in NT4 guests on rare circumstances
The maintenance release can be downloaded from VirtualBox’s official website. You can also check the full changelog for more details.