VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 3 Released: Enables VMSVGA Device By Default, OCI Improvements

Oracle's VirtualBox 6.0 multi-platform virtualization software continues inching closer to release.

VirtualBox 6.0 already has added support for guest additions on OS/2, better Oracle Cloud integration, improved audio/video recording support, improved host/guest file copying/handling, and a range of other fixes and improvements. With yesterday's release of VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 3 there is yet more feature work landing.

First up, VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 3 enables support for the "VMSVGA" graphics device by default. VMSVGA is VMware's SVGA II graphics adapter. Why this is notable for Linux users is that SVGA II has the nice mainlined and upstreamed graphics driver support with the VMware DRM kernel driver and Gallium3D user-space. I haven't tried Oracle's VMSVGA adapter recently to know how well it works, but will be giving it a shot soon to see if it plays well with the mainline VMware driver compared to the default Oracle VirtualBox graphics adapter that doesn't have an upstream Mesa/Gallium3D driver and relies upon the Guest Additions.

VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 3 also has improved OCI integration, now allows VMs to be exported via the command-line, support for DHCP options within VBoxManage, support for the Linux 4.20 kernel on guests and hosts, and various other additions. More details on Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.0 in its third beta form can be found via their mailing list.