Submitted by Currently in beta-testing, Parallels Workstation is a new virtual machine system for Windows and Linux. The main program is wizard driven and it takes around 30 seconds to set up a virtual machine profile.
Parallels: New Virtual Machine Software
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Eugenia Loli
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How does it compare to VMWare, VirtualPC, QEmu, Bochs… the site seems like a xerox copy of any other…
well, I’m download it, so I guess I’ll find out soon 🙂
Well. The download is quite small (17 Mb) for windows; the installaton is smooth, and the interface is EXACTLY LIKE the VMWare one. I set up a guest os FreeBSD 5, thinking about installing FreeBSD 6 on it (no target for the 6 series…), then the VM complained for my host system has PAE turned o. Nice, it tells me how to disable it. I disable it. Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… Parallel now simply freezes. Oh, well, I reboot once again… <uninstall>
The whole Website, the name of the product, the screenshots, how they named the components, the menus… everything reminds me a lot of VMware. Seems like a hacked version or something pretty, pretty close to VMware. I can’t say a word about the software behavior because I haven’t tried it yet but everything is so remarking that I can help making the comparison.
I don’t know why, but I got a feeling that this software is something like what CherryOS was. No, I’m not trolling, that’s just what I think. I can’t say a word about it, as I said before, because the emulated hardware is a lot different from VMware.
Somebody else feel this way, too?
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Eduardo Tafner, Brazil
st and it is very very light :-)))
I thought the same thing too – projects like that don’t appear out of nowhere overnight… So it’s probably some technology rebranded – again!
they don’t list FreeBSD as host. I’ll stick with Qemu then until I can test a native version of this.
Other than this it looks feature complete.
I installed Parallels this morning, and have since installed Windows 2000 and SUSE 10 on it. Right now, it is installing Opensolaris….
This is a linux host and it also has VMware 5.5 installed.
Under VMware, Windows 2000 is a lot slower, it feels like Parallel runs around 50 – 75% faster with Windows 2000
Suse is only slightly faster than it is under VMware.
So, I do not think it is simply a rebranding of another product for the following reasons.
VMware is slower, and you cannot change video drivers.
Win4lin cannot run Suse
Xen cannot run Win2k… (officially ??)
Solaris does not install
How much do you wanna bet this is some ripoff of the VMWare Player?
Or maybe when the CherryOS guys got fed up of ripping off PearPC, they thought they’d try Xen….
When I tried to start a VM in this thing, it declared that it doesn’t work with PAE activated… Any other VM’s with this bug?
I’ve never been able to get Vmware to work on my suse linux installs (they never have prebuilt modules for suse, and compiling them always fails), and had no problem with this one.
I tried syllable 0.5.7 live cd and it’s working ok.
Good luck for them — I think their product has solid bases, and if it has better pricing than vmware workstation, it’s a winner.
1. You have to give them contact information to get an “Evaluation Key”.
2. This evaluation key expires in 60 days.
3. There is no information on their site about getting a permanent key or how much this will cost.
It’s tough for me to say I should offer them information to spam me then burn several hours re-imaging my test box so I can install their software, installing their software, installing a couple test guest OSes, using them to see if this’ll really do the job, etc. when I don’t even know that I’ll be able to continue using the software if it *does* do the job. (i.e. No matter how much I like it, if it’s > $179/seat there’s absolutely no way I can justify purchasing it, so I might as well not even look. If it’s > $120/seat, it’d have to be exceptionally good to get me to consider purchasing.)
Give us more information, Parallels, or it’s not even worth trying this out 🙂
Just read somewhere [topshareware.com] that it does cost $99/seat. Of course you can download it there (without giving your email etc) – but honestly I don’t know about licensing and evaluation keys, haven’t installed it yet.
(Every piece of software is worth looking at:)
Ditto.
After I see a price, I may invest the time to evaluate.
hmm PAE?
it says i need to reboot and i have done that 2 times now but it’s not working!
I have it installed but don’t have the foggiest idea how to use it. VM’s were never my strong point. I tried opening a linux .iso and it wouldn’t do anything. Call me dumb, but how do I load an OS in this VM? I know with Qemu I can pass the -cdrom and boot to an iso. Is this how it works on other VM software?
It loosk like VMware….and there for it must be somekind of a ripoff….I love thinking like that,
I mean in how many ways can we do the same thing.
Hey isnt KDE similar to Windows…..
Now about the software, it seems fine, speed ok, similar to vmware.The only thing I didnt like is how it tapped my netcard and bypassed my firewall
The Internet archives (www.archives.org) don’t list anything for this site. It was previously a parked domain name. The WHOIS record gets updated 9/29/2005, with a name server at parallels.ru. Parallels.ru was reselling twoOstwo [1]. Ah, it’s just rebranded, that’s all. The PDF on the site listed version 2 from 9/29/2005, which is odd, since there was no listing of version one on the site. Now it all makes sense…
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TwoOStwo
What is the problem if the same team is going to promote their prooduct under the new name?
I suppose this might use the Serenity core
http://www.serenity-systems.com/SVISTA/SSI_index.html
Serenity again is a variant of TwoOsTwo which seems to be dead?
Don’t count on this to be alive 3 months from now
Just the opposite, Serenity used Parallels as its core. Parallels was purchased by another company, who decided to withdraw support for Serenity, leaving the Serenity product on very uncertain ground. I have used Parallels for several months now (after giving up on Win4lin pro) and it is _very_ fast and stable. I do wonder how it got so good so fast, I just hope it is all legit. As for the PAE situation mentioned by several people, many distros default to PAE (memory support > 4GB) being on the kernel. My Mandriva 2006 is like that, and I had to recompile the kernel with PAE turned off. They are working on this problem, but for now you will have to recompile the kernel. Lastly, $99 is the expected cost for a license when it is released.
Im testing win smoothwall, and its quite good…very easy an fast…no problems intaling here with mandriva 2006: only had to recompile the kernel becouse they dont suport high memory(?)…anyway, i have to do it anyway to compile the kernel for P4 and some more changes…after that the intalation was realy easy.
Bery good start for them….Its going to be on my pc for at least tho month…
Download Windows Vista: http://windows.czweb.org/show_article.php?id_article=173
It’s interface may resemble VMWare, but it simply isn’t because this supports OS/2.. VMWare does not, so that is a pretty good indicator as to it’s legit status.
Also, so it looks like VMWare… Atari ST looked like Mac, Amiga looked like Atari, Windows looked like Mac etc etc etc
VMWare for Linux is GTK-based, this one seems to use QT.
Look at their PDF flyer! 🙂