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VMWare Inc. Releases Free Virtual Machine Runtime
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."
why- cause it really WONT cost me anything to try...
Just pray I'm a vocal member of a new majority...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Basically, have you seen how there's a QEMU image of ReactOS, and I'm sure other OSes have QEMU and Bochs images?
Well, this means that they can now use a VMWare image, and link to the VMWare Player.
AFAIK, the existing virtual machines really just consist of a simple plain text file that describes the machine, and a disk image that can be one created by VMWare or another text file that points to a "standard" image file type.
So, does this mean that if I create those files myself, I don't need the commercial products at all?
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
However, given the compatibility problems with previous versions of VMWare I am not sure how much use it will be to people who download Open Source VMs off of the web to run (and I assume that's part of who this is aimed at). I've read a couple of places, for instance, that the current version of VMWare won't run the VMWare installation of Plan 9 that you can download from Bell Labs.
That said, you can run Qemu with kernel acceleration on Linux, FreeBSD (a platform VMWare doesn't even support) and 2000/XP and get pretty good performance - and it's probably a better option than a mere 'runtime' given that not only does it support an additional platform (FreeBSD), but you can create a VM on one platform and run it on all the others (even ones w/out accerlation, such as NetBSD -though you really would not want to).
Still, in the time between QEMU catches up to VMWare feature-wise it's nice to have a legal-but-hobbled copy.
Has anyone had luck with running VMWare on Linux and using a virtual machine to play Windows games? I play two online games and they are the only reason that I use Windows as my primary operating system. Not familiar with the performance concerns, but it looks like I could prepare a Windows gaming VM and run it when I game, and then work on other tasks in my preferred Linux environment. Googling...
Unbuntu has two different versions. One is an install CD, the other is a run CD that lets you launch linux from disc without installing anything. Now, of course, the CD version is going to be more limited, but given that you can read/write fat32 and network NTFS(and read local NTFS) you can still do a decent bit with it. It's not bad at all if you just want to give linux a whirl and see what it is all about/teach yourself how to use some aspects of linux.
You are who you are, let no one tell you different. But, never close your mind to a new point of view.
Need to run Linux at work but corporate policy won't let you? (or plan to install Linux anyway, but need that killer-app for Windows?)... Boss won't buy you a copy of VMWare?
Buy your own copy for personal use and simply install this "player" on your work PC. Need multiple users wanting to emulate an OS and don't have terribly high demands? One copy of vmware... multiple players.
I'm drooling.
I think they wrote "VMWare Inc." rather than "VMWare" to avoid confusion... because alot of people, when they hear "VMWare" will think of the application/product, and not the company. Yes, I know that it would be hard for a product to release another product, but still. The "Inc." qualifier was just thrown in to make it obvious that they were talking about the company.
I suppose this is only a problem if you're already bigoted against anything "Inc."
So far, no virtualization systems I've used has ever supported dynamic USB support.
I wonder what kernels their Linux player supports usb support. I assume it will be something like FC4 or RHEL ?.
Can someone who has downloaded tell me how the usb hotplugging works for you ?.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
If you dont want to figure out what is missing with the VMware offering, Parallels is offering 60 day trial licenses for its Parallels Workstation 2.0 Beta3. Check out www.parallels.com
Disclaimer: i have no affiliation to Parallels, I have just been trying out the product.
technoid_
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
Not just the VMWare images, but (more interesting for our company) also Virtual PC/Server images.
At least, that's what they claim. Tested the player with VPC and VServer images, but they all stop with an error in the log about importing something into the registry which is not in registry format. But then again it's still in beta.
home
You can get a free 30 day license from VMware for their regular product.
Make as many VM's you want and when it expires you can still use the 'runtime' thing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The video card it emulates is pretty low end. It's acceptable for the old SimCity games (I've tried them) but not for any modern shooter.
There is also the problem where you're still sharing your CPU with the virtual machine so you may experience pauses in the game. Not really noticable with strategy and turn based games, but it may be a problem with shooters.
The good news is that you can load up different Windows versions for different games (you do still have the licenses, right?). So you can run Win95 or Win98 or Win2K or WinXP if you want.
DOS works okay for most games, but the VMWare sound emulation doesn't match any of the old 1980's-era games that I tried.
Sounds like they are feeling pressure from Xen and are trying to prevent the truely free OSS solution from gaining mindshare. They make a good product, but cost and closed source will limit them in the long run.
Xen is not a competitor to VMWare, at least, not right now, it isn't. Xen requires the guest OS to be built with explicit support for Xen. VMWare doesn't require that. Xen can't run any build of Windows or NetWare, but VMWare can.
It's clear that this product is a shot across Microsoft's bow. Ever since MS bought Connectix, they've been gunning for VMWare. Those who've tried both VirtualPC and VMWare Workstation have almost universally preferred VMWare Workstation (I haven't tried VirtualPC, but VMWare Workstation rocks), but VirtualPC is still cheaper than VMWare ($129 vs. $199). VMWare has also recently announced that it's hoping to standardize the virtual machine software industry around common VM file formats (VMWare's, of course). If, by using a free VMWare Player, they can get everybody else to adopt their VM formats, they'll have won that war before MS can even get into the battle.
This doesn't really cannibalize sales of VMWare Workstation, even if others figure out how to create VMWare-compatible VMs from other applications, because those of us who use VMWare Workstation like all of its features (and there are lots). What it really does is seed the market for VMWare's real money makers--GSX Server and ESX Server. MS has nothing close to those products right now, and VMWare's hoping to permanently establish themselves as the market leaders before MS can get a comparable product on the market.
ha now that osx86 installation vmware image you downloaded can run on a leagal copy of vmware!
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Microsoft Released Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio viewers. meanwhile lotus released a viewer for Freelance Graphics.
Now, on a more serious note, This is cool, the "Player" is far more complicated than any viewer/player out there, and the uses for the thing are intriguing. From the Web Page of VMware, collages can work on a support case and all share the same one in a VM, or you can demo apps in the confort of the VM. The page even points to VMs made available by IBM, oracle and others. Of course, question is, What is the Status of the SW that you run in the VMs, including the OS itself? In the case of FOSS, we know the answer, but in other cases, just watc out guys.
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
Other than the lack of OS/2 support, however, VMWare does not seem to have any other important shortcomings, now that the free player allows to "clone and ship entire virtual machines" e.g. for the hassle-free demo and deployment of FOSS solutions.
Besides, it's a blessing for many computer classrooms, helping in particular to make them less Microsoft-centric and saving much time for administration at the same time...
Downloaded the player and their browser appliance image. Anyone know what the root password for the browser appliance is? [BTW, it's a very stripped down Ubuntu install, with Firefox, GAIM, BitTorrent, and a Terminal Server Client]
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Does this mean what I think it means...I can run their Browser Appliance from a USB Key for free? That would be awesome....!!!
Player has a lot of positive buzz right now here, as soon as we all get back home they'll be thousands of player installs all over North America. This is the product I've been hoping for to help demo products for external customers, and allow internal clients to use VMs without having to pay extra money or allow them to change things.
Xen who? It's not even on the radar here. Nothing against Xen, but it is years behind WS5 or ESX3.
Microsoft has been here giving away Virtual Server 2005 with a free R2 update. I have 4 copies of it and I have no idea what to do with any of them. MS was presenting today how they plan to integrate Virtual Server directly into Longhorn. How long with VMWare count MS as a partner instead of as their primary threat?
ESX 3.0 looks sweet, lots of new features. AMD, IBM, HP, and Sun have also been showing off their newest and greatest hardware for running ESX farms.
I was at a Microsoft event last month where the presenter was really talking up Microsoft® Virtual PC 2004 as being the cats meow. He actually spent 10 minutes out of the 3hr+ technet program to hawk it.
So..... I went to look it up after seeing the story posted (No, I didn't RTFA) but they had links to download a free 45 day trial and the listed price was ($129.00 MSRP) for the software title. So then I went to VMWare Inc's site to compare products and darn it if MS is undercutting their price by $60.00 ($189.00 MSRP)for their VMware Workstation 5.
Call me cynical but it smells like a little competitive marketing!
God: When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
VmWare is feeling a lot of heat from a lot of areas. If you think that Xen is causing VmWare no heat, then you are sadly mistaken. Linux/bsd on xen runs with much less performace penalty than vmware. In addition, there will be shortly, a way to run MS in it, but with a performance penalty. That means, for the occiasional user of windows, this is perfect, and quite a bit cheaper. So yes, xen is very much a competitor to VmWare
Of course, if you are running lots of windows, then Conenctix will be shortly the prefered approach. I would be sutprised if MS does not include connectix for free with all their windows.
So if you run Linux and Xen is bundled automatically, you would pay for VmWare, why? Likewise, if you run Windows, and Connectix is bundled for free, you would use Vmware why?
Sad to say, I am guessing that VmWare is likely to be netscaped.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Sounds like they are feeling pressure from Xen and are trying to prevent the truely free OSS solution from gaining mindshare. They make a good product, but cost and closed source will limit them in the long run."
/. I wonder "just what alternate universe are these people living in?"
I really don't want to be a smart *ss, but whenever I read these sorts of comments here on
I doubt most of the corporate types at VMware know that Xen even exists - let alone sees it as any sort of "competition".
#DeleteChrome
Here you go!!! (I hacked VMware's website and put this up just so you could get a free VM. Power to the people. H@x0r 73h p1@n37.
People BUY VMWare? O_o
Not only that, but it works!
:-)
I'm posting this from FireFox 1.0.7 running on Windows 95 4.00.950 (heh. it was on a bet... and the smallest image I had lying around) from within a VMware Player instance running on Suse Linux 9.3 Pro. At 1024x768 resolution with good graphics.
Had a little trouble with compiling the VMware kernel modules, but it was a quick fix.
Oh, and my mouse wheel doesn't work...
Tom
... Seen a paperless office lately?
just load another secretary image
Can we see some samples?
Infuriate left and right
Wow! I am simply in awe.
Somebody went through a lot of effort to type that in. I'll have to save it in case I need to impress some non-technical people.
un-ALTERED reproduction and dissimination of this IMPORTANT information is ENCOURAGED
It's always tough for the present to compete with the glorious future.
Virtual PC files don't even work on Windows. Well, Virtual PC 2004 files on Windows XP home to be specific. It gets half way through importing the virtual machine, then says it could not be opened. I tried with a dynamic hard drive, no hard drive, and a fixed size hard drive. Same thing every time. I'm not sure why it says it can open vmc files, because apparently it can not.
I've used VMWare(Workstation and GSX) a lot for the last couple of years. I use VMware Workstation daily on my desktop at home. I have maybe 30 or so VM's(versions of Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, Netware, and OS X). I run Netware and Windows Sever in GSX on RHEL4. I couldn't live without VMware. Novell has recently started distributing some of their eval stuff via VMware images, I think Oracle has as well. I'm assuming that VMware is doing this to encourage other companies to start doing similar things. It's really a pretty neat idea, testing/learning about different OS's and software through VMware. I have also used Virtual PC, and I must say that VMware is much, much better that Virtual PC. The only think I use VPC for is to occasionally screw around in OS/2, and I'm probably going to try and install that in VMware sooner or later. I'll admit I haven't used Xen, but for me the best thing about VMware is that I can run different OS's. I don't think running Linux-on-Linux is nearly as amazing or revolutionary as running Netware-on-Linux, or Solaris-on-Windows, etc. I think that VMware Workstation 5.5(currently in beta I think, I've not tried it though), will supposely run x86_64 guests, on x86_64 hosts. VMware seems to be really moving forward a lot, each new release seems to add something that I will actually use unlike a lot of other software. I only wish they would offer updates to GSX a litte often. Right now GSX won't work with VMware Workstation 5 VM's(which support multiple snapshots). VMware Workstation 5 will run 4.5 style VM's, but you cannot use snapshots. Other than that, I can't say there's anything I don't like about VMware. And no, I don't work for them, nor am I in any way associated with them. Just a very, very, happy customer.
Every time you post an article on Slashdot, I kill a server. Think of the servers!
So, for a security standpoint, yes you can do this and I'd highly recommend it. Heck, security would be what I consider a natural market for this product as testers need something a bit more robust. VMWare must think the same given the Browser Alternative image that exists. Nice to see someone else thinking security first.
BTW, the way I'd approach it is to place a known good copy of whatever image you are going to use in a safe place, or burn it to CD, just remember to change permissions when you copy it off the CD to remove the write-protect (depending on how you copy it). Whenever the image gets totally wacked, which it will, restore from the copy. You'll lose any settings/bookmarks/cookies/etc., but this may be considered a good thing. Also do remember that there is the potential, since the VM will be sharing the connection in some way with the machine to have a worm crawl out of the VM and climb into the host OS. Small, but it is there. The way I solve this problem is to block all the ports between the VM and the Host on the host side, using a software firewall just on that adapter if you are running Windows in a VM on Windows. Windows on *nix, don't worry about it as hybrids haven't been successful (yet). Not perfect but if you don't have a separate machine to set up just for browsing that can be restored from image daily/hourly/whenever, this is about the next best thing.
"[I]t is a wise man who admits the limits of his knowledge or skill, and that pretending either causes harm." --Terry Go
at first you are offtopic my friend
/bin/bash /// not the root password here, YOUR PASSWORD
....
...
...
but still i wont leave you in the struggle
#shell$ sudo
Password:
#root@yourhost$ passwd
Enter new UNIX password: xxx
Retype new UNIX password: xxx
there you go
smack baby smack
### smth for the the topic too
vmware is being slashdotted, and being slashdotted hard
can anyone provide cached links for some web cached page and can somebody please put out a gentoo image for vmware please ?
thnx a lot in advance
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.