Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, innotek VirtualBox and Sun xVM VirtualBox) is a free and cross-platform virtualization application that provides a family of powerful x86 virtualization tools designed for desktop, server and embedded use. VirtualBox can be used on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows platforms to run virtual machines of any of the aforementioned operating systems, as well as any BSD distribution, IMB OS/2 flavors, DOS, Netware, L4, QNX, and JRockitVE.

It’s portable

Oracle VirtualBox is portable, requires no hardware virtualization, includes guest additions and great hardware support. It also features USB device support, full ACPI support, multiscreen resolutions, and built-in iSCSI support. Support for PXE network boot, multigeneration branched snapshots, remote machine display, extensible RDP authentication, and USB over RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) is also integrated in Oracle VirtualBox.

Supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures

At the moment, the program is capable of running only AMD64/Intel64 and x86 architectures. By default, when creating a new virtual machine, you will be able to select the operating system that you plan on virtualizing. Ever since Oracle acquired the Sun Microsystems company, VirtualBox is actively developed by a team of professional engineers who implement new features and functionality with every release.

What New in version 5.0.12 :

• GUI: fixed wrong scrolling behaviour in the VM selector window when a VM item is dragged out of the chooser-pane area
• GUI: fixed the validation of IPv6 port-forwarding rules
• GUI: suppress the first-run wizard if a CD/DVD medium is inserted using the selector UI
• GUI: fixed the Ctrl+Break key sequence scan codes (bug #14927)
• GUI: improved handling of text selection mouse pointer (bug #750)
• Host services: fixed a crash during VM shutdown under rare conditions (5.0.6 regression; bug #14841)
• Shared folders: fixed a sharing violation if a file is opened to check the attributes (Windows hosts only; bug #14450)
• Webcam: passthrough fix for certain devices (Mac OS X hosts only)
• XHCI: fixed broken emulation if software virtualization is used
• XHCI: several fixes
• 3D: fixed state handling under certain conditions (bug #13487)
• Audio: several fixes
• BIOS: added LBA64 support for being able to boot from huge hard disks (bug #7415)
• EFI: fix for Windows 10 guests
• ExtPack: before installing an Extension Pack check if there are VMs running to prevent file system locking issues
• rdesktop-vrdp: source code tarball fixes
• Windows hosts: fixed hang when using VBoxAuthSimple library for VRDP external authentication (bug #14931)
• Windows hosts: fixed a regression which prevented it to attach to a physical network adapter having TCP/IP disabled (bug #14578)
• Windows hosts: fixed a regression which caused multi-port adapters to be shown as a single adapter (bugs #14558, #14622)
• Windows hosts: fixed a regression which caused created host-only adapters to not appear in the list (bug #14437)
• Windows hosts: fixed host-only adapter creation issues related to Windows 10 (bugs #14040, #14545)
• Linux hosts: .desktop file compatibility issue (bug #14808)
• Linux hosts / guests: fixes for RHEL 7.2 (bug #14866)
• The command for recompiling the host kernel modules was changed again, to /sbin/rcvboxdrv setup (bug #14723)
• Linux hosts: some fixes for PCI passthrough (still highly experimental)
• Linux/Mac OS X hosts: fixed a VM hang during startup under certain circumstances (bug #14933)
• Solaris hosts: added Python 2.7 bindings
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed a possible crash when the default input or output audio device changes
• Mac OS X hosts: fixed a panic under certain conditions
• Linux Additions: prevent the compiler from doing dead-code elemination on vital code in guest / host communication (bug #14497)
• Linux Additions: when mounting a shared folder, explicitly pass the share name so that /proc/mounts contains this name instead of ‘none’
• Linux Additions: workaround for a systemd problem in conjunction with SELinux which prevented to properly enable the ‘vboxadd’ service during while upgrading the Additions

Install/Update Oracle VM VirtualBox 5.0.12 on Ubuntu 15.10 Wily Werewolf, Ubuntu 15.04 vivid Vervet, ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (LTS) and Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana via PPA :