Originated from a German company InnoTek, VirtualBox is an x86 virtualization software product for enterprise and home users which is currently developed by Sun Microsystems as part of its Sun xVM virtualization platform. This application is supported by various host and guest operating systems such as Windows XP/Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, OS/2 Wrap and Solaris.

VirtualBox features various useful functions such as Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) control of VM, iSCSI support, USB support, remote display, etc. Besides, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). VirtualBox’s powerful performance and rich features have gained this application substantial support and popularity amongst Linux users. It was ranked the third most popular software package for running Windows programs on Linux desktops in a survey carried out in 2007 by DesktopLinux.com.

Sun today released VirtualBox 1.6.6, a maintenance release. See the ChangeLog for a list of changes since VirtualBox 1.6.4.

VirtualBox supporters can get a copy the latest VirtualBox 1.6.6 maintenance release which has been made available to the public by Sun Microsystems lately. The changes in this release are inclusive of the following: –

• VMM: fixed excessive logging (bug #1901)
• VMM: AMD-V stability fixes (bug #1685)
• GUI: added support for Ctrl+Caps reversed keyboards (bug #1891)
• SATA: fixed BSODs of Windows guests on a SATA disk (bug #1941)
• SATA: fixed hard disk detection on Solaris 10 U5 (bug #1789)
• VBoxHeadless: don’t start the clipboard service (bug #1743)
• VBoxHeadless: added -vrdp parameter which allows to start the VM session without VRDP (bug #1960)
• VBoxManage: fixes to creating raw disk/partition VMDK files, now accepts removable media on Windows (bug #1869)
• VRDP: fixed communication with MS Remote Resktop Connection on MacOS X (bug #1337)
• VRDP: clipboard fixes (bug #1410)
• VRDP: fixed crash during PAM authentication (bug #1953)
• Shared Folders: fixed a regression introduced in version 1.6.2: the shared folders service was sometimes not properly installed (Windows guests only, bug #1915)
• Shared Folders: don’t deny to load a VM if a shared folder is not accessible (bug #822)
• BIOS: allow to specify empty DMI strings (bug #1957)
• OSE archive: added missing Makefiles (bug #1912)
• Linux hosts: workaround for buggy gcc-4.3 compilers (e.g. openSUSE 11)
• Linux hosts: one more fix for compiling the kernel modules on Linux 2.6.27 (bug #1962)
• MacOS X hosts: shared folders unicode fix
• Solaris hosts: fixed link issue (bug #1840)
• Windows additions: allow to downgrade the package
• Windows additions: fixed corrupted installer icon on Windows 2000 (bug #1486)
• Windows additions: fixed bug when creating intermediate directories (bug #1870)
• Windows additions: implemented /xres=, /yres= and /depth= switches for the installer (bug #1990)
• Linux additions: properly unregister the misc device when unloading the kernel module
• Linux additions: fixed startup order for recent Linux distributions again (e.g. openSUSE 11)
• Linux additions: attempt to fix the autostart issue of !VBoxClient with Mandriva guests (bug #1699)
• Linux additions: fixed detection of patched Linux 2.6.18 kernels of RHEL5 / FC6 / CentOS 5.2 (bugs #1899, #1973)
• Linux additions: added new mount flags dmode, fmode, umask, dmask and fmask allowing to override the file mode (bug #1776)
• Documentation: added a note that jumbo frames don’t work (bug #1877)
• Documentation: document special host interface names on openSUSE11 (bug #1892)

Latest version of VirtualBox can be downloaded from http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Download VirtualBox 1.6.6:
For Vista X86
For Vista X64

Update VirtualBox 2.2.2:
Download VirtualBox 2.2.2

Update: VirtualBox 3.2.8