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VMWare Inc. Releases Free Virtual Machine Runtime

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the just-like-the-real-thing dept.

rfinnvik writes "VMWare Inc. has released a new free (as in beer) virtual machine runtime called VMware Player. According to VMWare, this free VM runtime makes it possible for anyone to run virtual machines created in their Workstation, GSX or ESX products. It also runs virtual machines created in Microsoft's virtualization products. The runtime is available for both Windows and Linux."

2 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Existing virtual machines? by yeremein · · Score: 5, Informative

    As far as I'm aware, there is nothing out there which can create (Bochs and Qemu can read) VMWare disk images, and they're more advanced than simple raw or dd-created files with filesystems slapped onto them.

    Actually, if you create a "pre-allocated" virtual disk (as opposed to dynamically growing), you'll end up with a text file "something.vmdk" that provides disk geometry and points at a raw bit dump "something-flat.vmdk". VMware (Workstation 5.0, anyway) can use an existing dd dump if you create a .vmdk file that refers to it. I've done this several times.

  2. Re:Existing virtual machines? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I have a tutorial with some details up at:

    http://www.laportestyle.org/tutorials/ghostinthema chine.php