Oracle releases first beta of VirtualBox 5.2

Oracle has announced the first beta release of its upcoming VirtualBox 5.2. The new build comes with a feature to help users export VMs to the Oracle Public Cloud.

The new release of VirtualBox 5.2 eliminates all the hassle of exporting VMs to external drives and again importing to another VirtualBox installation. The company has also improved the handling of Virtual Machine Tools and Global Tools.

The first beta gives a glimpse of all the features that you will get to see in the stable release, and has a number of noteworthy improvements. The accessibility support in the GUI and EFI support have been enhanced in the new build. On the audio front, Oracle has added asynchronous data processing for HDA audio emulation. The audio support has also received host device callbacks, which will kick in while adding or removing an audio device.

In addition to the features limited to the beta version, Oracle is set to provide automatic, unattended guest OS installation in the next VirtualBox release. The fresh feature will be similar to the ‘Easy Install’ feature that was debuted on the commercial VMware Workstation 6.5 and 7 virtualisation software. The stable build will also improve the VM selector GUI. Similarly, users are expecting the upcoming releases to completely revamp the GUI on all supported platforms.

Ahead of the final release, you can download the VirtualBox 5.2 Beta 1 from the Oracle website to get a glimpse of the new additions. Users should note that this is a pre-release version and all its features may not be stable on supported systems.