Imagine not one, but two, three or more separate operating systems loaded on a single PC, each of which functions as a separate OS on a separate physical machine. VMware Workstation 4 does just that by creating and managing one or more virtual machines on a single, physical host PC. Every virtual machine is a full-fledged virtual PC, where you can install a guest operating system of your choice, with network configuration and a full suite of PC software. Read the article at TomsHardware.
VMware Workstation 4: More Virtual PCs, More Functionality
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What does the reviewer mean when he says “there is no reference to the Mac world”??
If I buy VMWare, does the same lic. apply to both Linux and Windows Hosts or do I have to buy seperate licenses for each Host OS?
“If I buy VMWare, does the same lic. apply to both Linux and Windows Hosts or do I have to buy seperate licenses for each Host OS?”
You have to get a seperate license for each host OS.
Just wondering how he got VMWare to run on SuSE 9.0. That is an unsupported platform due to kernel incompatibilities as the SuSE kernel hangs with apic run so is disabled by default. That is listed on both the SuSE site and the VMWare site.
VMWare 4 runs most of available versions upto some stability. I have not tried Suse 9.0 but I have installed Fedora Core 1, and It’s latest release 1.9 and both work superbly. Mandrake 9.2 has some issues(while installing VMware tools, it first did not find pciutils and then gcc version not compatible and then kernel sources not valid). But it works without installing tools though you lose some features like sharing folders in hpfs folder under /mnt. Others seem to be fine ranging from knoppix to all live cd distros. Free Bsd has had some problems(I am not too familiar with tools under Free BSD) so may have not got it right.
“Have you ever asked to yourself if The Gimp can compete with Adobe Photoshop? Compare them directly, on the same computer.”
Yeah, and run Adobe Photoshop with WINE or CrossOver, which is cheaper and perhaps better performance too. If Disney, who have tons of money to buy VMware licenses, decided to use WINE with Photoshop instead of VMware, that’s gotta say something, right?
This is yet another review of VMware. A simple repeat of what has already been investigated (it’s rather marketing than a review imo). There have already been posted quite a few of these reviews here, including the newest 4.0.
Yet, one CANNOT decide this is a good product after reading this review because there are many, many alternatives for VMware. How do you know wether the freedom, price, stability, features, etc of competitors suit your needs better or worse when you don’t know them, when you or someone else hasn’t investigated that?
What is really interesting, is a compare between VMware and other alternatives like Win4lin, VirtualPC, Xen, WINE, CrossOver, UML, CoLinux, etc, etc, etc. Especially between newer versions.
I’ve said this earlier, then again this review is also a deja vu.
Here are some comparisions:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/hernandp/articles/vpcvs.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html
VMWare will run all the distros I have thrown at it. My question was about SuSE being the host OS, not a guest OS.
A lot of the ‘reviews’ and ‘editorials’ on this web site are starting to look like ads, like maybe the authors get free software or something for posting glowing reviews… I don’t have any evidence to this effect, this is based purely on my own observation.
On a seperate note, what would really make VMWare more useable? I’d like to see more current hardware support as an option in the software’s config. For example, say you just installed BeOS as a guest OS, which only supports NE2000 network cards. How about a plugin that would allow a virtual NE2000 device? I’m no programmer, but I think this could be implemented fairly easilly using Dynamic Link Libraries. http://www.winamp.com“>Winamp Fubar2000″ rel=”nofollow”>http://www.foobar2000.org/”>Fubar2000. Perhaps there are restrictions due to hardware pattent issues? If so, it doesn’t seem like it would be hard to make virtual hardware plugins that are compatible with the real hardware but not byte-for-byte simulations.
[/i]”Yeah, and run Adobe Photoshop with WINE or CrossOver, which is cheaper and perhaps better performance too.”[/i]
Not true. http://www.gimp.org/“>GIMP runs” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32/”>runs on Win32 (and other OS’s that support GTK) with the help of the <a href=”http://www.gtk.org/“>Gimp Tool Kit.
“If Disney, who have tons of money to buy VMware licenses, decided to use WINE with Photoshop instead of VMware, that’s gotta say something, right?”
He is obviously talking about VMWare+Photoshop vs WINE+Photoshop, not GIMP vs Photoshop performance.
Torrey: What does the reviewer mean when he says “there is no reference to the Mac world”??
Took me a bit to find the context of that statement, but the reviewer meant that VMware doesn’t do Mac emulation so you can’t run vritual Macs. Makes sense since VMware doesn’t do any processor emulation, but still I would prefer that a Mac emulator exist for my computers. The other way to interpret that statement would also be true: There is no equivalent to VMware for Mac, no general virtualization infrastructure that would let you run arbitrary OSes in virtual Mac computers on a Mac. Not as much need for it either as most alternate OSes for Mac are Unix-like, but it would be nice to run BeOS or the Xbox 2 SDK without dual booting at best.
Disclaimer about Mac emulation: SheepShaver (even if finished) won’t run on Windows (which I’m stuck with) and won’t run OS X, the only Mac OS I have any need to support. Alas, my computer budget is nil right now, so no Mac hardware purchases either
update the vmware kernel module with source available at http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-updateXX.tar.gz
VMware run without any problem on my SuSE 9.0
If you can get VMWare 4.5 it’ll run without a problem with kernel 2.6.x.
Thanks for the tips, greatly appreciated
Vware is a good product but it is very expensive !
“There is no equivalent to VMware for Mac”
Theoretically, QEMU and MOL would be able to run MacOSX on x86. QEMU would run in full system mode to fire up a Linux distribution on target platform PPC. Then from there, MOL can be started. Unfortunately, QEMU’s support to emulate the PPC isn’t complete.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu
http://www.maconlinux.org
You could buy yourself one of the cheap Pegasos models too.
those have a PPC, can run Linux, and on Linux they can run MacOSX via MOL. I heard a G3/400 (not sure about the MHz) costs about 180 EUR but haven’t been able to verify yet…
To get VMware working on Linux 2.6.x (any distribution) download a patch: http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/ (read the readme.txt).
Here’s a list with emulators, API implementations and virtual machines: http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Emulator — feel free to contribute.
> QEMU would run in full system mode
Sadly PPC system emu in qemu is still in development.
> To get VMware working on Linux 2.6.x (any distribution) download a patch: http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/ (read the readme.txt).
Or just use gentoo.
yes it is. For someone who wants it for a development work(specially if you have windows and want not to dual boot linux or experiment with diff distros!) then you would rather get new machine in the amount you throw to VMWARE. VMware is very good but very over priced specially for home/development users. For enterprise use, it is very good product nad provides very good product at good price!
Don’t waist your money on this product. To run other OS apps you require installation of the OS. Example say you run WinXP but want something that’s supported on another OS then you use VMWARE to install both the app and the OS required for it.
In Linux I either run software coded for Linux which is mostly free or run Windows software with Wine (free). No installation of Windows OS is required since Wine = Wine Is Not Emulation (see http://www.winehq.com). Alternatives are purchasing for a low cost Codeweavers CrossOver Office. For games I use WineX which is another tweaked version of basic wine (see http://www.transgaming.com).
With Linux there is more freedom to chose, more functionality, no product activations or licensing fees. This is something you will have to consider if you use VMWARE since you will have to pay for the app you wish to run but also the OS needed to run it on.
What does Gimp have to do with this article? Anyway, you shouldn’t need Gimp with VMWare since it’s ported on multiple platforms. If you want to compare professional Open Source tools to proprietory tools then compare these instead.
Cinepaint vs Photoshop.
Cinelerra/Jashaka vs Premiere/FCP/Smoke.
http://cinepaint.sourceforge.net/
http://heroinewarrior.com/cinelerra.php3
http://www.jahshaka.com/