What’s New in VirtualBox 7 Beta? Official Windows 11 & macOS Support Explained
Oracle’s VirtualBox 7 beta introduces official support for Windows 11, macOS Big Sur and Monterey, enhances the Windows 11 setup experience with unattended installation, and expands host‑OS compatibility, while keeping the open‑source, XML‑based VM configuration that makes migration easy.
VirtualBox is a powerful open‑source virtualization solution that works on servers, desktops, and embedded devices, offering rich features and strong performance for both enterprises and home users. VM configuration is stored in XML, making settings portable across machines.
Oracle recently released the first test version of VirtualBox 7, allowing a preview of upcoming features, most notably official support for Windows 11, as well as macOS Big Sur and macOS Monterey.
One major improvement is broader OS support; while Windows 11 could be installed on earlier VirtualBox versions, users often faced hardware‑compatibility verification issues. The official Windows 11 support in VirtualBox 7 greatly reduces installation difficulty.
VirtualBox 7 also refines the Windows 11 setup experience, simplifying the selection of the VM’s local folder and ISO image, and adding unattended setup. Unattended setup lets users pre‑configure user accounts, product keys, hostnames, domains, and enable Guest Additions, so the installer applies these options automatically without further user interaction.
If the host meets Windows 11 requirements, the VirtualBox installer will no longer display unsupported‑error messages, significantly speeding up the installation of a virtual Windows 11 system.
The beta is currently available for Windows, Linux, and macOS devices, though Oracle has not announced the final release date for VirtualBox 7.0.0.
Oracle VM VirtualBox supports the following host operating systems:
Windows hosts (64‑bit): Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows 11 21H2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022
macOS hosts (64‑bit): 10.15 (Catalina), 11 (Big Sur), 12 (Monterey)
Linux hosts (64‑bit): Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, 20.04 LTS, 22.04 LTS; Debian 10 (Buster) and 11 (Bullseye); Oracle Linux 6, 7, 8; CentOS/Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, 8; Fedora 35, 36; Gentoo; SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, 15; openSUSE Leap 15.3
Beta download link: https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.0_BETA1/
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Programmer DD
A tinkering programmer and author of "Spring Cloud Microservices in Action"
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