Sun has released VirtualBox 3.1.0, it's cross-platform virtualisation software to include support for 2D video acceleration for Windows guests.

Virtual Box is available in two versions. The open source edition is available under the GPL, but is only available from Sun as source code.

The full version is also available free of charge, but under a personal use and evaluation license that requires you to " use the Product on the same Host Computer where you installed it yourself and that no more than one client connect to that Host Computer at a time for the purpose of displaying Guest Computers remotely."

Commercial organizations need to buy licenses .The full version includes everything from the open source edition, an RDP server and USB support.

The following major new features were added in this version:

• Teleportation (aka live migration); migrate a live VM session from one host to another (see the manual for more information)
• VM states can now be restored from arbitrary snapshots instead of only the last one, and new snapshots can be taken from other snapshots as well ("branched snapshots"; see the manual for more information)
• 2D video acceleration for Windows guests; use the host video hardware for overlay stretching and color conversion (see the manual for more information)
• More flexible storage attachments: CD/DVD drives can be attached to an arbitrary IDE controller, and there can be more than one such drive (the manual for more information)
• The network attachment type can be changed while a VM is running
• Complete rewrite of experimental USB support for OpenSolaris hosts making use of the latest USB enhancements in Solaris Nevada 124 and higher
• Significant performance improvements for PAE and AMD64 guests (VT-x and AMD-V only; normal (non-nested) paging)
• Experimental support for EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface; see the manual for more information)
• Support for paravirtualized network adapters (virtio-net; see the manual for more information)

Version 3.1.0 also includes an extensive list of bug fixes, refinements and other changes.VirtualBox runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and OpenSolaris hosts.

To get more details visit, http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

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