One of the most expected virtualization release, Workstation 5.5 (build 18463) brings in a lot of new features and improvements.
This announcement is made before the VMware official one (which should go public on 11/29/05).
VMware Workstation 5.5 Unofficially Released
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I went looking for Workstation 5 yesterday and saw that there was a 5.5 update, then looked in the store and it said that the Packaged distro was out of stock until the 5.5 boxes arrive …
I’m definitely considering picking it up, perhaps at the same time as when the FreeBSD project releases their new logo packaging/handbook/mousepad/etc
OSNEWS gets it first.
yeah, but slashdot will copy it off osnews tomorrow 😉
I’m a linux and free software zealot. I have to admit that. But hell, VMWare has got to be the best spent 180$ in my whole life (talking about computer software that is). Put up great software I can’t live without, and hell I’ll buy it!
I’ve been following the RC’s with no real issues, so I guess there are good chances that this final release won’t have too much of them either.
VMWare is an excellent piece of software, worth every penny. One of the rare proprietary software on my box, but also one of the most useful, stable and polished one. Kudos to vmware.
I love it…people wear the word zealot like a badge, with pride…while others throw it around as an insult.
This site amuses me.
VMWare comes as number 1 on my list of worth buying applications.
Dude, I had completely forgotten how to install Windows 98, but VMWare allowed me to try that, and guess what, Windows 98 is light enough to run from Linux without any pain.
Moreover, VMWare is the best way to try out new Linux distros, and it’s even greater if you want to create your own distro or if you are a software developer and needs to test your application on several different setups.
VMWare is the geekiest program that I have used in a long time. I’m looking forward to buying it.
Guess I will have to see if the player with the same 18000 engine has support for those improvements.
Here is a quick download link:
http://download3.vmware.com/software/wkst/VMware-workstation-5.5.0-…
Dosen’t require a login. Hope it helps!
IS this legal to download?
yeah, cos it won’t work without an evaluation serial – and details of how to get that are on the login page the poster skipped for you!
there is no demo, just demo serials, the download is the same file if you just bought the thing.
If I had to pick the single BEST software purchase I’ve ever made, it would have to be VMware Workstation. I use it almost every day, and with dozens of different virtual machines. I keep finding new stuff. Today, for example, I was dreading the task of building a physical Windows 98 machine, but thought I had to since I needed a real (as in, not virtualized) wireless network adapter. Much to my surprise, when I gave it a shot in the RC2 VMware Workstation 5.5 that I’m running, the virtual machine picked up the network adapter when I connected it to a host USB port! Made my day MUCH better!
i dont understand the wireless support bit.
vmware uses a bridged “wrapper” around whatever network device your host has, so a wireless card on the linux host would look like an ethernet card on the win98 guest.
so why would the guest need to know anything about it being wireless or usb or whatever.
this is coming from someone who has been using vmware on both platforms since 3.2!
> i dont understand the wireless support bit.
If the wireless device isn’t supported by Linux it could still work in the guest OS.
i dont understand the wireless support bit.
All I know is that on my host machine VMWare will not pick up my wireless connection and use it.
For a specific product I was testing, I needed teh real hardware, and not a virtualized equivalent.
I know VMWare is pretty cool. Heck, I run it myself, but what is all the gushing about installing Windows 98, etc on VMWare. It could do that well before 5.5!
I know VMWare is pretty cool. Heck, I run it myself, but what is all the gushing about installing Windows 98, etc on VMWare. It could do that well before 5.5!
Haven’t you read the changelog?:”Full support for 64-bit guest operating systems and improved support for 64-bit host operating systems enable users to work in a broader range of environments.”
Besides it runs w2k as i experienced it very fast and more fluid as when i would install it natively on my AMD64.
kudos to the dev’s for their amazingly good product.
Ok, yes, VMWare supports OSS… But I need support for software mixing – which OSS doesn’t provide.
Everybody is using ALSA now, and OSS has been deprecated for a long time. Why do all proprietary programs (VMWare, Skype, RealPlayer, video games) insist on using OSS?
Even then, i can run most of them with the “aoss” wrapper – but not VMWare.
I’m experimenting with VMWare 5 at the moment, so I’ll be checking this out.
“so why would the guest need to know anything about it being wireless or usb or whatever.
this is coming from someone who has been using vmware on both platforms since 3.2!”
that’s nice that you’ve been using it since 3.2, thank you for sharing, but how is that relevant?
anyways, it makes complete sense to me if you’re using the product to help you support clients and users and whatnot
if a user is running a windows 98 os natively on a machine, and that user needs to install a wireless network adapter…..well, wouldn’t it be nice to have a true simulation of that user’s environment? rather than having the wireless adapter show up as a regular wired eithernet adapter on the virtualized windows 98 simulation?
Would have to echo others’ sentiments that WMware is the best, most useful platform for testing software configurations, new applications, servers, new browsers, file sharing, risky operations while still remaining safe and isolated from trouble, etc.
Just make sure you have a lot of ram and enough HD space and you’ll be right. I simply can’t imagine having 2 separate machines (and all the hassle and electricity consumption, extra hardware, inconvenience, etc) just for simply testing software, servers, new browsers, new configurations, doing tech support for customers with ‘default’ OS settings in place that the customer sees, etc.
I’m not knocking VMware, but I can think of several reasons why you may want a dedicated machine. You may be doing a lot of performance/timing analysis, something which won’t work right if you are running OS+VMWare+OS+program. Also, you could be doing continual stress testing, which bog down your main machine.
By klynch on 2005-11-24 18:03:49 UTC in reply to “VMware = great”:
I’m not knocking VMware, but I can think of several reasons why you may want a dedicated machine. You may be doing a lot of performance/timing analysis, something which won’t work right if you are running OS+VMWare+OS+program. Also, you could be doing continual stress testing, which bog down your main machine.
———
of course there are reasons for a dedicated machine, but just that most (not all) of the scenarios you’d normally need one are far better handled by VMwawre. That was my point, I guess. Cheers.
1. Does it have Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) support already?
2. Is it hypervisor based like XEN(http://www.xensource.com/) and Parallels (http://www.paralells.com/)?
Anyway – great product!
While Xen may be nice in theory, without a VTx supporting processor, it’s kinda crappy – no Windows or unmodified Linux support.
Xen3 should be very nice, but I don’t want to buy new top-of-the-range hardware to run it whilst VMWare 5.5 runs great on my old 750MHz Duron (and very nice on my P4 3HT!) and on Windows hosts….
Yes VMware Workstation 5.5 supports Intel VT. Now just try to find a vendor who ships such CPUs…
And hypervisor is a buzzword. Both Xen and Parallels are built on technology that is very similar to VMware’s. It used to be called a “virtual machine monitor” in the literature, but now marketing people call it “Hypervisor”.
In other news, a new Xenoppix release was released.
It’s knoppix+Xen and includes two guest OSs – Plan 9 and NetBSD.
http://unit.aist.go.jp/itri/knoppix/xen/index-en.html
http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/
The man who asked if it is legal to download: yes it is
You can also obtain a trial 30day key to unlock full vmware functionality.
VMWare WorkStation 5.5 is the greatest release ever! I hope the next version will be a smaller download: linux rpm weighs around 100Mbs
// birdie
Does it run LINUX!!!!!!!!!1
Yes it does, you can have it as a guest OS or as the master one, or, if you like, you can have linux as both master and guest os – all as easy as pie 🙂
Would be nice if it had that but it don’t look that way still *SIGH*
Yea couldnt live without vm. Beats having to go from pc to pc when testing other apps/O/S’s. Tried MS virtual pc once & the performance sucked in comparision.
To the guy about if it runs Linux…
I have server 2k3 as my host & installed White Box Linux with no probs at all.
5.5 is pretty nice. Has the option to add multiple “Virtual” processors now & the Virtual NIC is gigabyte.
just upgraded to 5.5 for linux and it works a treat – ubuntu 5.10 guests no longer suck (actually has ubuntu guest listed now!)
i even tried smp support under centos 4.0 (on my p4 hyperthreading) and it worked fine.
seems they’ve made the tools more intelligent too – i upgraded the tools on ubuntu510, centos40, rhel4as and win98se all just fine (i always use the tar.gz not the rpm) in fact rhel4as even had modules matching my kernel so no recompile.
also it seems you don’t need any-any-update94 to get it to work on a fedora4 host now.
Can someone post a list of officially supported guest OS’s?
Last time I checked, Debian wasn’t officially supported in VMWare 5.0.