VMWare makes it very easy to run Linux right on your Windows desktop (and the other way around). And, if you’re feeling adventurous, you can even try running the beta versions of the next version of Windows called “Longhorn” or even Sun’s Solaris operating system. Read the review at ExtremeTech.
VMWare Workstation 4.5.2 Review
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
… about Linux and have wondered whether or not they should try it out. Well, wonder no more. VMWare makes it very easy to run Linux right on your Windows desktop.”
Jesus, get yourself a Linux Live-CD for 0,000 USD instead of this bloat for 200 USD. I had a hard time continue reading after this very first sentence.
VMWare was nice when…
1. I only had one computer. Now I have 12 so VMWare is almost totally useless to me.
2. When it was fast. Scratch that, it was never fast.
I’m almost certain PCTask on a Amiga 3000 was faster
VMWare is enough fast for me (for compiling and first level testing).
I have only one computer, and 3 OS on it,
and I am able to use them simultaneously.
[..] won’t run 3D DirectX games in guest operating systems;.[..]
LOL, like VMWare was ever meant for playing games.
I installed Slackware 10 on this thing and couldn’t get bridge network going. I could access the network inside the virtual machine, but I couldn’t telnet or ping the virtual machine itself. However, I switched to the host only networking option which fixed the problem.
And the guy is right – trying to install the VMWare tools in Linux is a roytal pain in the ass. It started asking me question I didn’t know the answer to.
What are the vmware tools? Aren’t they just drivers for the virtual display adapter? If so, most linux distros already supply those drivers, since they’re free software.
This isn’t a casual piece of software. It’s aimed at professionals who need the flexibility it offers. That said, I’ve used vmware for several years now and for developement it’s a fantastic tool. It makes it possible to emulate diverse environments to test out tricky code, all on a single easily managed machine. Just make sure it’s a beefy unit.
My only gripes are the price and the fact that you only get a licence for one OS version when you buy it. So if you buy the Linux version you don’t get the Windows version too.
Why would you chose VMware over one of the many other choices? This is just one of the many other “reviews” (actually rather a commercial to buy this) while there’s so many other alternatives available. It just doesn’t make sense without looking to the alternatives. Someone says “emulating diverse environments to test out tricky code” oh my you cannot ’emulate’ a different architecture with VMware you need a different tool then. Plus it won’t be very fast.
This is a product that has matured and is the best at what it does. That is why a developer would choose over the so many choices.
BTW what are the many choices other than QEMU, Bochs, VirtualPC?
I’ve always been impressed with VMWare for development. I can run multiple Windows servers/workstations on my PC which only has 512MB ram. Heck I do my main Windows ActiveDir dev inside a VMWare session on a server w/ VS.NET 2003.
For giggles I even loaded Suse 9.1 using 192MB ram in a VM and it runs beautifully.
We were not able to get VMWare Tools working properly in SUSE 9.1. The installation of the tools in Linux guest operating systems is a royal pain compared to Windows guests. In order to install the tools you must boot into the command prompt, because VMWare Tools can’t be installed when X is running. You must also configure the tools at the command prompt as well before being able to run them. Frankly, this is ridiculously primitive compared to how the tools are installed in a Windows guest operating system.
Frankly , he must be nuts to say that!
before anyone jumps on benjamin, calling him a troll, let’s consider what he’s saying. I’d have to agree that if you have to kill X to get install the tools, that’s definitely a minus. Never did get the tools installed myself (had other dependencies, or something like that, and couldn’t get the network going for myself, so no resolution of said deps.) If I’m wrong, and the tools have no deps for installation, forgive me; I tried this a while ago.
just read the article. i would have to agree with the author. the tools are a pain to install, and having to kill X is going to prevent probably more users than VMWare would like from using their software. Eugenia, feel free to delete my previous comment.
Of course you would have to kill X. You are loading new mouse and video drivers for X to use. The ones supplied by vmware are more efficient and allow the mouse to maintain focus where ever its at. This eliminates (mostly) that whole control-alt thing to release the mouse. You would at the very least have to restart X to load the new drivers anyway. You cant install new Nvidia drivers from inside X, so whats the big deal?
TG
The other thing you get by installing the tools is the ability to add nice host->guest shared folders, which is very useful.
I tried and tested Vmware 4.5.1 and Vmware 4.5.2 and found sound to be a problem so was display. Frequency of the display was static at 85Hz(even though my host OS frequency was 65) and it did not allow me to change it. Also Sound lags behind so much and there is distortion. Only player that works well is Windows Media Player. Any other player(Winamp, Real player, Coolplayer etc) do not work and give distorted output of sound. Can someone tell me how to fix these problems with Vmware. I did install Vmare tools before doing all this. So that’s not a problem.
But other than that Vmware seems to be a good product. It is meant for professionals and not gamers. I installed Debain on it and it is really fast on Vmware. Usable for most programming/development/testing tasks.
Someone on this forum tells us about using linux live cd. I have tried using them but they do not have gcc or toher stuff
“This is a product that has matured”
That’s relative. Proof?
“and is the best at what it does.”
Proof? You must have analyzed all the other alternatives.
This benchmark makes me believing VMware doesn’t scale at all: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html
“That is why a developer would choose over the so many choices.”
Developers do just as well chose WINE, Winelib, Cygwin, Bochs, or plain native. I’ve seen no statistics which back up what you say and even if these existed it says more about popularity. Not about quality. Doesn’t say anything about wether the software is worth the price because once again warez blurs any argument based on statistics to proof some ‘price vs quality’ premise.
“BTW what are the many choices other than QEMU, Bochs, VirtualPC?”
Depends on what you want to do. With QEMU you emulate a whole processor ofcourse that costs more resources. But you can also do much more with it, things you can’t even _do_ with VMware. If you want to test portability of your Linux/PowerPC application on Linux/Alpha for example thats possible with QEMU. Or Linux/x86 on Linux/ARM. Bochs emulates a x86 processor as well. Ofcourse it is slower than VMware which doesn’t do that. However as a result Bochs runs on Solaris, IRIX, and most likely other non-x86 archs & OSes as well. Here’s a number of VMs and emulators http://freshmeat.net/browse/74/
This benchmark makes me believing VMware doesn’t scale at all: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/performance.html
That’s funny, that benchmark uses VMware workstation 3.2. The current version is 4.5.2.
Developers do just as well chose WINE, Winelib, Cygwin,
Bochs, or plain native.
I have been using VMWare to help me develop and test software on different Windows versions and configurations for that last two years and it works perfectly. Only Bochs and VirtualPC would help me achieve this, but I chose VMWare and do not regret it for a minute.
What’s wrong, do you have a problem with it because it’s not open source or free (as in beer)?
current Live CD. The reason for doing this is that I rarely use my Linux or FreeBSD virtual machines and thought that the only way I would really learn either OS is to use them exclusively (FreeBSD as my File/Source Control server). However, the problem is that I’m a full-time Windows developer and need to run things like IIS, Visual C++, MSOffice, etc. I have planned to purchase SUSE 9.1, VMWare for Linux, and the Codeweaver plug-in (I’m not adverse to paying others for their hard work) and run this system for 8 months to see if I can gain any new nix* skills while still being a productive Windows developer. Who knows, maybe I’ll start playing with QT and port some of my stuff over to Linux and FreeBSD. I will be keeping a journal of my progress along with any issues or problems that may arise. I will write an article for OSNEWS outlining my experiences. Don’t worry, this will not be another installation review. Look for something next spring.
Regards.
After years of installing Linux and FreeBSD on spare machines, and more recently in virtual machines, I have decided to run SUSE 9.1 as my main workstation OS. I made this decision after playing with their current Live CD. The reason for doing this is that I rarely use my Linux or FreeBSD virtual machines and thought that the only way I would really learn either OS is to use them exclusively (FreeBSD as my File/Source Control server). However, the problem is that I’m a full-time Windows developer and need to run things like IIS, Visual C++, MSOffice, etc. I have planned to purchase SUSE 9.1, VMWare for Linux, and the Codeweaver plug-in (I’m not adverse to paying others for their hard work) and run this system for 8 months to see if I can gain any new nix* skills while still being a productive Windows developer. Who knows, maybe I’ll start playing with QT and port some of my stuff over to Linux and FreeBSD. I will be keeping a journal of my progress along with any issues or problems that may arise. I will write an article for OSNEWS outlining my experiences. Don’t worry, this will not be another installation review. Look for something next spring.
Regards.
vmware is useless.
some people claim it’s fast… well, it’s not fast compated to plex86.
a real virtual machine? ha! it’s so tweaked to run windows and linux that my openBSD boot disk crashs, and i’m trying to boot BeOS zeta for some time nwo without success.
Now, bochs is DA THING!
it *almost* boot BeOS, it can boot my openBSD boot disk. It emulates i386 inside other architetures wich let me run windows executables from my SGI (ok, it’s still a bit clumsy to compile it to mips, but at least i have the option to try… wich is not the case with closed software)
“That’s funny, that benchmark uses VMware workstation 3.2. The current version is 4.5.2.”
You got a newer one? I found no notices which said “performance improvement” at http://www.vmware.com/support/ws45/doc/whatsnew_ws.html
“I have been using VMWare to help me develop and test software on different Windows versions and configurations for that last two years and it works perfectly. Only Bochs and VirtualPC would help me achieve this, but I chose VMWare and do not regret it for a minute.”
What was the _sane_, _objective_ compare you made (if there is none please ignore my question) which let you decide for this product?
“What’s wrong, do you have a problem with it because it’s not open source or free (as in beer)?”
Red Herring, putting words in my mouth.
What’s wrong is this:
* Overhyped product.
* No, or not much compares are made between the various options available.
* The same articles which are more marketing than objective reviews over and over again. Only on OSNews.com there are several available already, and its all over the Internet. In depth reviews between the various products and options (for example a 2nd computer vs VMware WS) are however scarce.
I don’t see what that has to do with FLOSS. The options for which VMware WS is obviously not usable is:
* Any usage on non-x86
* Games
And imo doubtful for
* Development (see high performance tasks)
* High performance tasks (because of the benchmarks i read and my experience with a demo of VMware WS)
* Trying or running Linux on x86, Windows (because lots of better utilities are available)
Those make a more in depth review of the things it is able to do in compare with other utils worth already. Such are also interesting for making a thorough price / quality decision. IOW: a smart and justified buy of the software. Fact VMware doesn’t provide such statistics themselves nor doesn’t sponsor them isn’t promising to me.
One of the best pieces of software ever made, IMO.
Lets me run a Linux workstation and still have access to tools I long for under Windows, like Photoshop and Dreamweaver.
What’s better than having Apache and Tomcat running locally on your machine, doing development work in Eclipse, and being able to design the frontend JSPs using Dreamweaver and Photoshop connecting to my public_html directory via a local samba share.
Not to mention being able to test my pages in IE. Okay, okay, I know there’s WINE for that, but WINE uses different fonts than IE running on Windows, so it isn’t quite the same.
Truly the best of both worlds for web development.
Oh, and by the way. VMWare is BLAZING fast. I would say there is a negligible difference in speed between real Windows XP and XP under VMWare for 2D applications.
obviously, your PC has to be fast enough to support VMWare for it to be fast. But my machine is a 2.6Ghz with 1GB of RAM, so there’s no problem there. I give the virtual machine 384MB of RAM, which is plenty. And I still have plenty of RAM for my other apps.
do you think sound and graphics are same when u run winxp under vmware?
You got a newer one? I found no notices which said “performance improvement” at…
Nice troll. What don’t you read the “What’s new” section of the website. It clearly mentions improve performance for Linux guests:
http://www.vmware.com/support/ws45/doc/whatsnew_ws.html
What’s wrong is this:
Overhyped product.
Please provide details on what VMWare officially says their product will do, but doesn’t.[/i]
No, or not much compares are made between the various options available.
So then perform this comparison yourself and write an article about it.
for example a 2nd computer vs VMware WS
A second computer doesn’t cut it. Got it?? Do you understand??? I currently have about 20 virtual machines
for debugging and testing my applications. VMWare allows
me to take snapshots of an image so I can revert to a clean machine image after making changes during a test. This is very simple and very fast. How would I do this with only a second computer? Should I buy 20 computers or 20 hard-drives for each image?? You just don’t get it!!
I don’t see what that has to do with FLOSS. The options for which VMware WS is obviously not usable is:
* Any usage on non-x86
* Games
– VMWare has never stated that they support anything but x86.
– Games??? Are you on crack? Let me clarify the main purpose of VMWare for you with an excerpt from their website:
VMware Workstation is powerful virtual machine software for developers and system administrators who want to revolutionize software development, testing and deployment in their enterprise
Notice how it doesn’t say anything about it being used as a gaming machine. Did you notice that?
And imo doubtful for
* Development (see high performance tasks)
* High performance tasks (because of the benchmarks i read and my experience with a demo of VMware WS)
* Trying or running Linux on x86, Windows (because lots of better utilities are available)
– Since when does debugging and testing constitute a high performance task? Unless I’m testing a high performance application (which I take to mean taxing on CPU/MEM/IO resources), then most development work is fairly innocuous. An I guess I have been imagining the last two years of my very successful VMWare work.
– High performance tasks. Please be specific about what it is that you are doing. Besides, I have never seen any VMWare documentation (Technical or marketing) that talks about high performance computing on their workstation product. Can you provide a link to this? I have also never seen any reviewer discuss this. Please provide details.
– Linux and FreeBSD run perfectly fine on VMWare. I don’t use these virtual machines that much, but I’ve never had any problems with them. Do they run as fast as a native OS? Of course not!
Nice straw man arguments dpi. Why don’t you go test drive a honda civic and then bash it on the internet because it can’t tow a large boat. You clearly don’t understand what VMWare workstation is used for, or are a complete troll.
I use VMWare on a daily basis at work as a network administrator and find it to be an invaluable tool.
I have one workstation at work with two ethernet cards. One of the ethernet cards is connected to a 802.1q trunked cisco switch. Using VMware and this switch I am able to set up virtual networks between VMware images themselves and then route them out to arbitrary VLANs. The guest operating system images don’t even know or care about the fact its a trunked connection.
In a minute I can start up a suspended test copy of Windows XP and throw it on the outside of our firewall to test firewall rules with applications like Realaudio, Quicktime, etc.
In a couple minutes time I can throw up a seperate XP image in our test network environment. I can remove a couple patches, test out a network security scanner we are currently evaluating, then with a couple clicks and about 10 seconds time roll the XP image back after intentionally breaking the image. I can do the same with every other version of Windows I can find install CDs and CD keys for.
When investigating “captured” viruses I can set up a XP image behind another vmware image running Linux and do sniffing and firewalling to see what the virus attempts to do. When I’m finished its a couple clicks to rewind the image to a previous saved state.
If I want to make a copy of an vmware image its as easy as simply copying the directory the disk image files and configuration file are located in and renaming the copied directory.
When investigating some “weird” IRC servers I see showing up in netflows on our resnet I start up a locked down Linux image and use that image to connect to the IRC server for paranoia reasons. Of course I then revert the image to its last known good state.
The workstation itself runs Fedora Core 2 and I leave a copy of Windows XP running under VMware most of the time to do those few things that still require windows. Examples include WebEX conferences with vendors and the occastional ancient cisco and dell java based configuration tool that requires specific revisions of JVMs that only seem to work well under Windows.
I do this crap and more on a daily basis using only _one_ workstation. And because its a dual nic system whatever experimentation I’m doing with networks under vmware doesn’t affect the host system at all.
VMware is invaluable, its performance is decent. It does things that “real” machines can’t do (rolling back to an image in a few seconds time) without expensive dedicated hardware solutions that are less flexible. It is the only choice for what I do under Linux. (I have not evaluated Micrsoft’s Virtual PC product but then again it doesn’t run on top of Linux so it isn’t very useful to me.)
Basically if you can’t understand the use of VMware its because its not targetted for you. VMware is marketted these days to professionals… Development houses, network engineers, and help desk staff love VMware. Every technically knowledgeable person at work I’ve shown it to has gotten work to buy a copy for their workstations.
from the bochs website:
http://bochs.sourceforge.net/doc/docbook/user/faq.html“ rel=”nofollow”>http://bochs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/topper.pl?name=Bochs+FAQ&url=h…
High performance tasks you say….
5. Tell me about performance when running bochs.
Because Bochs emulates every x86 instruction and all the devices in a PC system, it does not reach high emulation speeds. Kevin reported approximately 1.5MIPS using bochs on a 400Mhz PII Linux machine. Users who have an x86 processor and want the highest emulation speeds may want to consider PC virtualization software such as plex86 (free) or VMware (commercial).
I do development on a Point-of-Sale system used in about 10,000 retail locations. The minimal useful test system consists of at least 4 computers networked together, along with several serial terminals.
Before VMWare, I needed a test cart full of hardware (about $10,000 worth) in order to test or demo our system. With VMWare, I can run the whole thing on my laptop, which means I don’t need the $10,000 cart of equipment, and I can do my work anywhere.
VMWare has made my life considerably more pleasant. I think it’s a bargain!
“Troll”
Yeah, resort to name calling. That’s mature, shows your arguments are strong by themselves, and its good for the discussion. If i’m a troll, why bother to reply?
“Nice troll. What don’t you read the “What’s new” section of the website. It clearly mentions improve performance for Linux guests”
Ok, i misread. You forgot to add that this improvement is for Linux kernel 2.6 only. It is not stated what exactly has improved which i find unfortunate.
“Please provide details on what VMWare officially says their product will do, but doesn’t.”
From dictionary.com
“hype1 ( P ) Pronunciation Key (hp) Slang
n.
1. Excessive publicity and the ensuing commotion: the hype surrounding the murder trial.
[…]”
Their definition is exactly what i meant, not some fantasy definition you like to put. Hyped, because of the many non-informing articles on VMware floating around the Net. It is in such way succesful, that some people really, really believe its THE application for running “Windows on Linux” or “Linux on Windows”, for all day usage.
“So then perform this comparison yourself and write an article about it.”
That’s an option, but i’m not obligated to do this and it would be out of date when version 4.5.3 comes out because of believers like you. I also don’t have a Windows test machine available and have no interest installing one. I also don’t have time and no interest installing some bunch of OSes, let alone those for which i don’t have a license. Same argument like “if you don’t like the USA, just leave”. There are other options available and i chose for the one i’m performing now.
“A second computer doesn’t cut it.”
Well you already have licenses for the software so that doesn’t make a difference. It doesn’t need to be one computer either, but maybe in such situation the price of the software is justified. I think its a rather uncommon if not rare situation.
“- VMWare has never stated that they support anything but x86.
– Games??? Are you on crack? Let me clarify the main purpose of VMWare for you with an excerpt from their website”
Nowhere did i stated VMware.com or one of its representatives do claim it is suitable for such jobs. I merely state that it isn’t suitable for these jobs. Apparantly i’m right, but it seems to be too hard for you to admit that.
“- Since when does debugging and testing constitute a high performance task? Unless I’m testing a high performance application (which I take to mean taxing on CPU/MEM/IO resources), then most development work is fairly innocuous.”
“- High performance tasks. Please be specific about what it is that you are doing.”
Exactly, because VMware isn’t good for large throughput. I knew you were gonna say this, perfect now i can make the following point: if you want high performance, Xen might be a better alternative as it is even better than UML. We’re talking about big things here, like 1024 child OSes running in their own space. VMware won’t do that good (and don’t come with some rambling that VMware isn’t meant for that. This is what some VMs are able to do, and meant to do). If performance is no concern then Plex86, Bochs, VirtualPC […] might be a better alternative.
“Besides, I have never seen any VMWare documentation (Technical or marketing) that talks about high performance computing on their workstation product.”
I don’t give a damn what has been said or not, i am pointing out what it is NOT useful for. Beyond common believe its not some swiss army knife perfect suitable for any VM / emulation job humanity is able to imagine. Cause its not, and thats what i’m pointing out here.
“- Linux and FreeBSD run perfectly fine on VMWare. I don’t use these virtual machines that much, but I’ve never had any problems with them. Do they run as fast as a native OS? Of course not!”
OpenBSD developers, for example (and many other projects as well, like ReactOS) do chose for Bochs for testing code which doesn’t have to run high performance. So, the earlier statement “developers chose for VMware” is obviously a load of crap
* Fact is not 100% of developers do and there are no statistics.
* It is not suitable for all development tasks (as pointed out above, basically everything with which you reply to: “but they never stated the application is good for this task”).
“High performance tasks you say….”
Did i said Bochs is suitable for high performance tasks? Nope.
PS: Paid it yourself, or did your boss pay it? Or maybe you just searched for a serial on l33t hideouts? What was it?
Yeah, resort to name calling. That’s mature, shows your arguments are strong by themselves, and its good for the discussion. If i’m a troll, why bother to reply?
It’s not an insult. I was merely stating a fact. You are a troll! My arguments are based on fact and two years of using VMWare workstation to aid my development work. You’re the one resorting to the typical fallacious straw man attacks. You bash VMWare for not doing things it was not designed to do. You say it is hyped because it doesn’t do all the things you think it should. It is not hyped by VMWare or me or any review I have ever read about it. It does what they advertise it will do well. Do you understand? It’s that simple. If it doesn’t work for you then don’t use it. Use whatever VM you like.
Where on the VMWare website does it say it supports OpenBSD or ReactOS? It may work, but I certainly wouldn’t expect an OS to work well if the company doesn’t support it. If those developers decide to use bochs then they probably have very good reasons for this. I’m sure it’s a fine VM.
Your initial comment:
Why would you chose VMware over one of the many other choices? This is just one of the many other “reviews” (actually rather a commercial to buy this) while there’s so many other alternatives available. It just doesn’t make sense without looking to the alternatives. Someone says “emulating diverse environments to test out tricky code” oh my you cannot ’emulate’ a different architecture with VMware you need a different tool then. Plus it won’t be very fast.
Did you read the review? How is it a commericial when it clearly identifies problem areas when installing the VMWare tools inside a Linux guest? What are the alternatives? Bochs is slower, Plex86 doesn’t support Windows, VirtualPC is certainly an option but who knows when MS will add some code to adversely effect a non MS operating system. Are there others? Quite possibly, but the few hundred dollars that I paid for VMWare was well worth it.
diverse environments != different architecture.
VMWare workstation works well for what it was designed to do, and what VMWare advertises it will do. It’s obvious that your only intent in this thread is to bash it. You’ve added nothing constructive to the discussion. Much like those who bash Linux in a Linux thread or *BSD in a *BSD thread without providing any informed input to the discussion, you are a….troll.
…for the scenario Tim’s describing, VMWare is a complete boon to use. During my time as a Windows C++ developer, I had my own stable of VMs on my hard drive simply becuase it was invaluable to my efficiency as a developer. During that time, we were supporting our product on any version of Windows from 3.11…in all sorts of various configurations. The “run Wine” people don’t understand this subtle distinction in the use cases.
Suppose someone reports a bug/issue with Windows 98 and IE 5.5222113 hotfix 1.3221 (or whatever)…bring up the Win98_IE5 VM, install said hotfix, attempt replication…depending on the situation, sometimes you’ll mirror the VM for more testing or simply revert cleanly back to the previous state.
Regarding speed, I used 3.x on a dual 1GHz PIII (work box). The company also paid for my copy of VMWare 4, which I run on my personal machine, an AMD Athlon 64 laptop with 2GB RAM. Even with the relatively slow HD, the OSs in the VM certainly seem to run at a natural pace.
Regarding trying/running Linux with Windows (or vice versa), yes there are other tools…perhaps the article focused a little too much on that.
BTW, for what it’s worth to the poster mentioning BeOS (or one of the derivatives)…BeOS has never successfully run under VMware, at least under the versions I’ve run (3.x, 4). I really wanted that to work after moving away from machines compatible with Be…
huh!! X normally don’t start on a linux Guest Unless vmware tools are installed.I would’ call it a pain and primitive.
I would say fast and quick , nice and easy!