[vbox-dev] Inclusion of the Guest Additions in Ubuntu 11.10 by default

[Alexey Eromenko]

Michael: The same policy is followed by other distros as well
(Debian/openSUSE/Mandriva/FreeBSD).

All - except Red Hat ship VBoxGuestAdditions as part of distro and
install by default if detect VBox platform.

For example Debian 6.0 -- ships with GA 3.2.10 - it is not bad. It
allows seamless mouse integration, clipboard sharing, view IP
addresses and more basic stuff...
The reason: Debian 6.0 also provides VBox OSE 3.2.10 (host part), so
if someone installs Debian 6.0 as host then VBox OSE on it (from
Debian repo) then Debian 6.0 guest on it -- it makes perfect sense.
For newer versions of VBox, users should manually install GA, that is
provided by Oracle VBox.

>From my own experience installing GA 4.1.x on Debian 6.0 or openSUSE
is more pleasant than on platform that never had GA (Windows or RHEL).
Also GA doesn't change that much (except for 3D part) - but basic
functionality is covered sufficiently well by v3.2.x.
What's needed is stable ABI, + testing, so that we won't break
existing / old GA.

But I like the current situation - the fact that many distros ship GA.

-- 
-Alexey Eromenko "Technologov"