1 First steps • Remote machine display. The VirtualBox Remote Desktop Extension (VRDE) allows for high-performance remote access to any running virtual machine. This extension supports the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) originally built into Microsoft Windows, with special additions for full client USB support. The VRDE does not rely on the RDP server that is built into Microsoft Windows instead, it is plugged directly into the virtualization layer. As a result, it works with guest operating systems other than Windows (even in text mode) and does not require application support in the virtual machine either. The VRDE is described in detail in chapter 7.1, Remote display (VRDP support), page 90. On top of this special capacity, VirtualBox offers you more unique features: – Extensible RDP authentication. VirtualBox already supports Winlogon on Windows and PAM on Linux for RDP authentication. In addition, it includes an easy-to-use SDK which allows you to create arbitrary interfaces for other methods of authentication see chapter 7.1.5, RDP authentication, page 94 for details. – USB over RDP. Via RDP virtual channel support, VirtualBox also allows you to connect arbitrary USB devices locally to a virtual machine which is running remotely on a VirtualBox RDP server see chapter 7.1.4, Remote USB, page 93 for details. 1.4 Supported host operating systems Currently, VirtualBox runs on the following host operating systems: • Windows hosts: – Windows XP, all service packs (32-bit) – Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) – Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit1). – Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) – Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) • Mac OS X hosts:2 – 10.5 (Leopard, 32-bit) – 10.6 (Snow Leopard, 32-bit and 64-bit) Intel hardware is required please see chapter 14, Known limitations, page 181 also. • Linux hosts (32-bit and 64-bit3). Among others, this includes: – Ubuntu 6.06 (“Dapper Drake”), 6.10 (“Edgy Eft”), 7.04 (“Feisty Fawn”), 7.10 (“Gutsy Gibbon”), 8.04 (“Hardy Heron”), 8.10 (“Intrepid Ibex”), 9.04 (“Jaunty Jackalope”), 9.10 (“Karmic Koala”), 10.04 (“Lucid Lynx”), 10.10 (“Maverick Meerkat). – Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 (“sarge”), 4.0 (“etch”), 5.0 (“lenny”) and 6.0 (“squeeze”) – Oracle Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 – Redhat Enterprise Linux 4, 5 and 6 – Fedora Core 4 to 14 – Gentoo Linux – SUSE Linux 9, 10 and 11, openSUSE 10.3, 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3 – Mandriva 2007.1, 2008.0, 2009.1, 2010.0 and 2010.1 1Support for 64-bit Windows was added with VirtualBox 1.5. 2Preliminary Mac OS X support (beta stage) was added with VirtualBox 1.4, full support with 1.6. Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) support was removed with VirtualBox 3.1. 3Support for 64-bit Linux was added with VirtualBox 1.4. 13