Is VirtualBox Dead?

[Gerowen]

Apologies for spelling or grammar, I'm on my phone.

So earlier today I fired up one of my VMs in VirtualBox. I tried to forward a USB device, which I've done before without issue, and Windows couldn't recognize it. I had the thought that maybe it's because I had upgraded from Debian 11 to 12 as the host and maybe I needed to check for updates and maybe update the extension pack that facilitates things like USB forwarding. The extension pack in the past has always been a separate download on their site, so I headed over to VirtualBox(.)org , and it seems kind of barren. The big old download button takes you to a page with links to the source code and that's about it. The download page used to be filled with links to the extension pack, binary installers for various platforms, repo instructions for various Linux distributions, etc., and literally none of that was there. The only thing that remotely looked like a link to actually download it was for "older builds" like 6.1, but when I clicked that it just took me to a page with a couple lines explaining that the extension pack was licensed a certain way with a link to the license, but no links to actually download anything.

The only way I can see that you can download it from their website now is to download the source code and build it yourself. The Debian repo I already have set up appears to be working and contains a copy of 7.0, but if I want up update the extension pack, or even set it up on a different system, I'm just out. Adding a Debian repo requires importing and trusting a signing key for that repository, none of which I can find now.

I can only really think of two explanations:

1) VirtualBox is a huge net loss for Oracle and they're cutting it loose.

2) Tons of companies were using the free, personal version of it for business purposes, so they're trying to corral those people into buying a support license from them and are just removing all the free downloads from their website.

Update I just tried to visit their site on my phone to double check and make sure I'm not just blind before posting this, and the whole site is down now.

I don't mind using Qemu on Linux, it works fine. I just kept VirtualBox around because I only occasionally use VMs for a few very specific tasks for my personal use, and it was easier to get set up with.

I had noticed though that, the last time I tried starting a Windows 10 VM in VirtualBox, if you install the guest additions, which includes a virtual display driver, it breaks the aero/transparencies in the Windows UI so that weird things happen, like the background of the start menu being completely transparent. And it has been that way for a while. Maybe they are just abandoning it altogether.

[Gerowen]

I checked again a few minutes later and everything appears to be back, so maybe they were having issues with their site? Maybe a big update? Still doesn't explain why entire sections of the site were removed though. Weird though because it was several hours ago that I first found the site in its broken state, so who knows what they were up to.

[REM2000]

i saw an update to 7.0.8 and found i had to download it directly from the oracle site instead of the VBox one, im glad theyve sorted it out. 

https://www.oracle.com/virtualization/virtualbox/

[IATW]

The webpage is ok :

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

The last virtualbox version is 7.0.10, released on July 13 2023 !

You can download it here :

https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.10/

 

 

Edited July 24, 2023 by IATW