VirtualBox 7.0 Adds First ARM Mac Client, Full Encryption, Windows 11 TPM

Nearly four years after its last major release, VirtualBox 7.0 comes with… a lot of new features. Chief among these are support for Windows 11 via TPM, support for EFI Secure Boot, full encryption for virtual machines, and a few Linux niceties.

The big news is support for Secure Boot and TPM 1.2 and 2.0, making it easy to install Windows 11 without registry hacks (like Oracle recommends for 6.1 users). It’s strange to think of people who can’t meet the security requirements of Windows 11 on their physical hardware but do so with a couple of clicks in VirtualBox, but here we are.

VirtualBox 7.0 also allows virtual machines to run with full encryption not only inside the guest OS, but also logs, saved states, and other files attached to the virtual machine. For now, this support only works via the command line, “for now,”notes Oracle in the changelog.

Beyond that glaring warning sign, Mac clients, both on Intel and ARM, have now abandoned all kernel extensions, relying entirely on Apple’s hypervisor and vmnet frameworks for their operation. However, for now, this means that they have lost their internal network functions; Oracle says this will be “provided later”.

Linux hosts are getting “redesigned”screen resizing as well as “initial support”for automatic updating of Guest Additions inside Linux guests. Perhaps most interesting for Linux hosts is the support for DXVK, a Vulkan-based implementation of DirectX layers that allows Windows 3D applications to run in Wine. This provides some parity with Windows hosts, which receive standard DirectX 11 support in this 7.0 release.

VirtualBox 7.0 is available for Windows, Linux, Solaris, Intel-based Mac hosts, and, as noted, with some serious early support for ARM-based Macs.

Listing image by Kevin Purdy