thelinuxlink.net

http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

Any comments or suggestions. How does this differ from the workstation product that sells for $189?
After reading this page it sounds like you can't do an install of a guest OS:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/faqs.html

It sounds like you need to create a virtual machine image first with the workstation product and then have the other machine 'play' it.

Anyone have experience with this?

Patrick wrote:http://www.vmware.com/download/player/

Any comments or suggestions. How does this differ from the workstation product that sells for $189?
After reading this page it sounds like you can't do an install of a guest OS:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/faqs.html

It sounds like you need to create a virtual machine image first with the workstation product and then have the other machine 'play' it.

Anyone have experience with this?

;i've used vmware workstation quite a bit. it's an exceedingly slick product. vmware player is to vmware workstation what flash player is to flash--you can use virtual machines, but cannot configure them.

;i for one am very interested to see at what level xen virtual machine monitor is going to compete with vmware, if at all. microsoft's products, of course, doesn't hold a candle to vmware, namely because it doesn't support any non-microsoft os yet.

;treehead

xen in action:

;this "virtual machince center" looks like a very interesting way of trying out various operating systems/software programs... i'd be very interested to see what the limitations are.

;treehead[/url]

treehead wrote: ;i for one am very interested to see at what level xen virtual machine monitor is going to compete with vmware, if at all. microsoft's products, of course, doesn't hold a candle to vmware, namely because it doesn't support any non-microsoft os yet.

Xen looks like it's going to be pretty good. The performance is already better than VMware for most things. I know people are using it for virualization quite a bit in production systems. The big downside is that it won't run Windows, but in a server environment that's not much of a problem.

I know some big players are working to try to get Xen into the mainstream kernel. Personally I think it will be the way to go for Linux virtual hosting.

;interesting: o'reilly just published an article on virtualization. i haven't read it yet, but it looks interesting. i've already e-mailed him about xen. ;)

;treehead

treehead wrote:;interesting: o'reilly just published an article on virtualization. i haven't read it yet, but it looks interesting. i've already e-mailed him about xen.

I saw a guy from HP doing a presentation on virtualization with a heavy emphasis on Xen at the Ohio Linuxfest. It was very interesting. I've got plenty of notes on it, and if I ever get the time I'll write up an article on it. Maybe next week - I've got a couple days off.

Yes, I have been playing with it lately. I first tried out the Browser Appliance VM (slim Ubunut with Firefox) from VMWare, but I noticed no sound support. So, I rebooted, when into BIOS setup, set boot from CD as highest priority, inserted some live CD, and noted the audio did work. Then, it dawned on me that I could just install a new OS from a CD. But it would be nicer to just have a blank vm from which to start. After a little reading about vmware player hacking on hackaday, I now have a blank vmware image that I can easily start from. And then, with a simple text edit, one can make the VM's CD drive use an iso image for the OS install.

Gomer_X wrote:I've got plenty of notes on it, and if I ever get the time I'll write up an article on it. Maybe next week - I've got a couple days off.

;please do. i'd be very interested in reading your notes.

;treehead

I'm actually doing a lot of work with VMware ESX and SAN's in enterprise. What is interesting to know is that the VMware ESX uses a linux bootstrap to install/configure and start the proper ESX kernel that runs the virtual machines.

ESX 2.5.2 (current release) uses the Red Hat 7.2 distro as it's bootstrap. The upcoming ESX 3 (1Q06) will use the RHEL3 distro as it's management.

Why am I so entusiastic about it... well I allows me to install Linux boxes even if 100% Windows companies. Large banks and industries move to virtualisation. they might be Windows shops, but Linux is entering the data center. These administrators then need to use the configuration and management interface of ESX, so they start to be interested in Linux. And so the seed for GNU/Linux and Open Source is planted... it slowly grows...

ddennedy wrote:After a little reading about vmware player hacking on hackaday, I now have a blank vmware image that I can easily start from. And then, with a simple text edit, one can make the VM's CD drive use an iso image for the OS install.

My question is can you install new software on the image or is it static? I'm trying to push a migration to linux on the desktop at work (at least for developers initially). They're really into lotus notes. They use it for process flow and tracking. I know you can run Lotus Notes with crossover but I'd like to present all options. I'm wonder if using vmplayer would be a more cost effective option than using crossover. Possibly having a windows image with all the legacy software running on it. I think vmplayer running with a windows image might be cheaper and more flexible?

I'm going to give this a whirl:
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/123400015 ... /#comments

Sounds like a fun project.