14 DAY TRIAL // The GNOME Project has recently announced that the first maintenance release of the GNOME Boxes 3.16 software, a machine emulator and virtualizer based on QEMU, is now available for download and will be distributed as part of the GNOME 3.16.1 desktop environment.
According to the raw changelog, GNOME Boxes 3.16.1 is here to fix the installation of Microsoft's deprecated Windows XP operating system by adding only USB mouse and keyboard peripherals to new virtual machines.
Additionally, the GNOME Boxes 3.16.1 update adds support for Home directories in filesystems that don't have O_DIRECT support, and fixes an issue with the VM creation wizard, which hangs on secondary views when the user cancels it via the Esc key.
Last but not least, the GNOME Boxes application will now appear in the Start Menus of other open-source desktop environments than GNOME, and the correct screenshot will be loaded for shutdown machines.
The case of no CPU defined in libvirt-based virtual machines will now be gracefully handled by the application. Download the GNOME Boxes 3.16.1 sources right now via Softpedia.
To upgrade the software in your distribution, make sure you check the default software repositories for updates. GNOME Boxes 3.16.1 is already available for Arch Linux users.