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VMWare Inc. Releases Free Virtual Machine Runtime

Posted by CowboyNeal on Thu Oct 20, 2005 05:37 PM
from the just-like-the-real-thing dept.
Software IT Technology
rfinnvik writes "VMWare Inc. has released a new free (as in beer) virtual machine runtime called VMware Player. According to VMWare, this free VM runtime makes it possible for anyone to run virtual machines created in their Workstation, GSX or ESX products. It also runs virtual machines created in Microsoft's virtualization products. The runtime is available for both Windows and Linux."
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VMWare Inc. Releases Free Virtual Machine Runtime 50 Comments More /

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  • see, now I'm gonna try linux.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by way2trivial (601132) on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:40PM (#13840267) Homepage Journal
    why- cause it really WONT cost me anything to try...

    Just pray I'm a vocal member of a new majority...
    • Unbuntu has two different versions. One is an install CD, the other is a run CD that lets you launch linux from disc without installing anything. Now, of course, the CD version is going to be more limited, but given that you can read/write fat32 and network NTFS(and read local NTFS) you can still do a decent bit with it. It's not bad at all if you just want to give linux a whirl and see what it is all about/teach yourself how to use some aspects of linux.
    • No need for VMWare for that really. Knoppix is pretty good, and you can even find versions of it that come with QEMU. No need to install anything.

        • Re:see, now I'm gonna try linux.. (Score:4, Informative)

          by tommy_traceroute (701929) on Thursday October 20 2005, @08:46PM (#13841479) Journal
          Is QEMU usably fast?

          Depends on your definition of "usably."

          I've got a USB stick with Damn Small Linux installed, both bootable and through QEMU, and it's screamin' fast when booted direct, but barely manageable on an Athlon 2500+ under QEMU. If you do most of your work from a terminal, it's fine, but the GUI, not so much.

          So, answer = not really, but it's still damn cool.

    • Re:see, now I'm gonna try linux.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chasuk (62477) <chasuk@gmail.com> on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:48PM (#13840750)
      I'm using the VMware Player to browse Slashdot, RIGHT now, with something called the "Browser Appliance," which I also downloaded from their site. "Browser Appliance" consists of a version of Ubuntu and Firefox 1.0.7. It works slicker than shit, with almost zero system degradation.

      I'm impressed!
        • Set it's virtual root partition to a path under your main OS. That way changes to preferences can be saved along with data files, but the application and guest os are freshly loaded each time and seperated from the host os and its applications. This will actually work nicely for me. My boss had told me that I am not allowed to install Firefox when I get my next new PC so that I match the corporate desktop when I do application upgrade testing, now I can just download a Linux distro and run it under VMWare =

  • Existing virtual machines? (Score:5, Informative)

    by eMartin (210973) on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:42PM (#13840278)
    AFAIK, the existing virtual machines really just consist of a simple plain text file that describes the machine, and a disk image that can be one created by VMWare or another text file that points to a "standard" image file type.

    So, does this mean that if I create those files myself, I don't need the commercial products at all?

    • Re:Existing virtual machines? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RLiegh (247921) * on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:46PM (#13840319) Homepage Journal
      As far as I'm aware, there is nothing out there which can create (Bochs and Qemu can read) VMWare disk images, and they're more advanced than simple raw or dd-created files with filesystems slapped onto them.

      • Re:Existing virtual machines? (Score:5, Informative)

        by yeremein (678037) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:12PM (#13840518)
        As far as I'm aware, there is nothing out there which can create (Bochs and Qemu can read) VMWare disk images, and they're more advanced than simple raw or dd-created files with filesystems slapped onto them.

        Actually, if you create a "pre-allocated" virtual disk (as opposed to dynamically growing), you'll end up with a text file "something.vmdk" that provides disk geometry and points at a raw bit dump "something-flat.vmdk". VMware (Workstation 5.0, anyway) can use an existing dd dump if you create a .vmdk file that refers to it. I've done this several times.

      • Re:Existing virtual machines? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by mvdw (613057) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:44PM (#13840720) Homepage
        Whatever their format, is there something in the VMWare license that says you can't share them? Because if it's possible to share them, then someone with a valid copy of VMWare (or even, dare I say it, an evaluation version), can create a whole bunch-o-images, and the rest of the world can benefit.
        • Nope, nothing in the EULA for VMWare Workstation to prevent you from sharing/distributing images and I've read that sucker each and every time we do another beta/release candidate (mostly to catch typos). You're supposed to stockpile these puppies if you need them so you have a stack of testing platforms. Now I'd be real careful about Microsoft EULA's, but those are supposed to be modified here shortly, if they haven't been already.
      • Just use this [gnu.org] to create an empty vmdk-file. Boot virtual machine from CD-ROM and install OS.
    • This looked great, but the verbage on the web site is a little misleading. I downloaded and installed it thinking "Great! Now I can load up those MS Virtual PC Images I've been using for testing (and supporting those legacy VB6/Access applications), and I don't have to boot to Windows anymore!"

      When it didn't work, I had to dig around the site, eventually downloading the "VMwarePlayerManual10" PDF file, where on page 3 I found:

      Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server Virtual Machines (Windows Hosts Only) On Windows hosts, VMware Player can run Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server virual machines. When you open a Virtual PC virtual machine in VMware Player, it automatically creates a VMware-compatible configuration file (.vmx), while preserving the original Virtual PC (.vmc) configuration file. You can save the VMware-compatible virtual machine.

      But can I then load up the VMX in the Linux version of the player? It doesn't seem to like it very much - I guess it just doesn't work.

      Crap! I guess I have to plunk down some $ and re-create thost images in VMWare if I want to do that - easier just to keep booting into windows - it takes hours to install and configure Windows on a new virtual machine...

  • This could be very cool for demoing Linux apps (Score:5, Interesting)

    by multiplexo (27356) * on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:43PM (#13840292) Journal
    Right now you have live CDs that you can boot from to run Linux on a Windows machine without touching the hard drive, but you then have to reboot the machine into Windows to run your Doze stuff, now you could run Linux apps in your Windows environment. Another cool application might be a virtual machine that runs your browser and another one that runs your e-mail, get a virus? Not a problem, it's isolated in the virtual sandbox. I haven't worked with vmWare in a long time, how does the performance stack up these days? I might have to get a copy and play around with this.

  • Gee, that's nice. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RLiegh (247921) * on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:43PM (#13840295) Homepage Journal
    However, given the compatibility problems with previous versions of VMWare I am not sure how much use it will be to people who download Open Source VMs off of the web to run (and I assume that's part of who this is aimed at). I've read a couple of places, for instance, that the current version of VMWare won't run the VMWare installation of Plan 9 that you can download from Bell Labs.

    That said, you can run Qemu [qemu.org] with kernel acceleration on Linux, FreeBSD (a platform VMWare doesn't even support) and 2000/XP and get pretty good performance - and it's probably a better option than a mere 'runtime' given that not only does it support an additional platform (FreeBSD), but you can create a VM on one platform and run it on all the others (even ones w/out accerlation, such as NetBSD -though you really would not want to).

  • Response to new alternatives (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:44PM (#13840302)
    Anything free out of VMWare these days seems more like a response to free competitors like QEMU [qemu.org] (or it's faster virtualization form KQEMU) than anything else.

    Still, in the time between QEMU catches up to VMWare feature-wise it's nice to have a legal-but-hobbled copy.

      • There is a GPL re-implementation of KQEMU called QVM86 or something like that. Still alpha-quality, though.

        And to be honest, I generally see *no* performance improvement with KQEMU loaded vs. not loaded. A bug I'm sure, but it's been there for at least the last two versions. Anyway, sometimes I get bluescreens with KQEMU loaded, so I just don't bother. At least QEMU is faster than Bochs.

        QEMU is pretty good for what it is, considering the price. Win2k runs acceptably fast, though of course XP and 2003 are do

  • Excellent for "black sheep" corporate Linux users. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GiMP (10923) on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:48PM (#13840336) Homepage
    Need to run Linux at work but corporate policy won't let you? (or plan to install Linux anyway, but need that killer-app for Windows?)... Boss won't buy you a copy of VMWare?

    Buy your own copy for personal use and simply install this "player" on your work PC. Need multiple users wanting to emulate an OS and don't have terribly high demands? One copy of vmware... multiple players.

    I'm drooling.

  • USB adapters... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Gopal.V (532678) on Thursday October 20 2005, @05:54PM (#13840378) Homepage Journal
    So far, no virtualization systems I've used has ever supported dynamic USB support.

    I wonder what kernels their Linux player supports usb support. I assume it will be something like FC4 or RHEL ?.

    Can someone who has downloaded tell me how the usb hotplugging works for you ?.
    • I work for a large company and we have a number of VMWare Workstation licenses. I downloaded the vmplayer today and used my existing VMWare workstation image with it (W2K image on Linux host). It started up fine. I then plugged the USB connector for my Kyocera 7135 Palm phone into my Linux system and hit the hotsync button. A "button" appeared accross the menu bar of the VMWare window with the title of the USB device (something like "Kyocera phone"). I could click on the botton to toggle as to whether or no

  • Wish they'd finally support OS/2 as well... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by D4C5CE (578304) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:25PM (#13840604)
    ...especially as many banks would certainly want to pay for the privilege of getting another few years out of their legacy apps on that platform.

    Other than the lack of OS/2 support, however, VMWare does not seem to have any other important shortcomings, now that the free player allows to "clone and ship entire virtual machines" e.g. for the hassle-free demo and deployment of FOSS solutions.

    Besides, it's a blessing for many computer classrooms, helping in particular to make them less Microsoft-centric and saving much time for administration at the same time...

  • Browser Appliance from USB key (Score:5, Interesting)

    by www-xenu-dot-net (922425) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:32PM (#13840648)
    Does this mean what I think it means...I can run their Browser Appliance from a USB Key for free? That would be awesome....!!!

  • A posting from VMWorld (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dosguru (218210) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:34PM (#13840659)
    Player has a lot of positive buzz right now here, as soon as we all get back home they'll be thousands of player installs all over North America. This is the product I've been hoping for to help demo products for external customers, and allow internal clients to use VMs without having to pay extra money or allow them to change things.

    Xen who? It's not even on the radar here. Nothing against Xen, but it is years behind WS5 or ESX3.

    Microsoft has been here giving away Virtual Server 2005 with a free R2 update. I have 4 copies of it and I have no idea what to do with any of them. MS was presenting today how they plan to integrate Virtual Server directly into Longhorn. How long with VMWare count MS as a partner instead of as their primary threat?

    ESX 3.0 looks sweet, lots of new features. AMD, IBM, HP, and Sun have also been showing off their newest and greatest hardware for running ESX farms.

  • Huh? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Gadren (891416) on Thursday October 20 2005, @07:27PM (#13841029)
    People BUY VMWare? O_o

  • _Very_ good move by VMWare (Score:4, Interesting)

    by imemyself (757318) on Thursday October 20 2005, @11:11PM (#13842144)
    I've used VMWare(Workstation and GSX) a lot for the last couple of years. I use VMware Workstation daily on my desktop at home. I have maybe 30 or so VM's(versions of Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, Netware, and OS X). I run Netware and Windows Sever in GSX on RHEL4. I couldn't live without VMware. Novell has recently started distributing some of their eval stuff via VMware images, I think Oracle has as well. I'm assuming that VMware is doing this to encourage other companies to start doing similar things. It's really a pretty neat idea, testing/learning about different OS's and software through VMware. I have also used Virtual PC, and I must say that VMware is much, much better that Virtual PC. The only think I use VPC for is to occasionally screw around in OS/2, and I'm probably going to try and install that in VMware sooner or later. I'll admit I haven't used Xen, but for me the best thing about VMware is that I can run different OS's. I don't think running Linux-on-Linux is nearly as amazing or revolutionary as running Netware-on-Linux, or Solaris-on-Windows, etc. I think that VMware Workstation 5.5(currently in beta I think, I've not tried it though), will supposely run x86_64 guests, on x86_64 hosts. VMware seems to be really moving forward a lot, each new release seems to add something that I will actually use unlike a lot of other software. I only wish they would offer updates to GSX a litte often. Right now GSX won't work with VMware Workstation 5 VM's(which support multiple snapshots). VMware Workstation 5 will run 4.5 style VM's, but you cannot use snapshots. Other than that, I can't say there's anything I don't like about VMware. And no, I don't work for them, nor am I in any way associated with them. Just a very, very, happy customer.
    • Basically, have you seen how there's a QEMU image of ReactOS, and I'm sure other OSes have QEMU and Bochs images?

      Well, this means that they can now use a VMWare image, and link to the VMWare Player.
      • Not just the VMWare images, but (more interesting for our company) also Virtual PC/Server images.
        At least, that's what they claim. Tested the player with VPC and VServer images, but they all stop with an error in the log about importing something into the registry which is not in registry format. But then again it's still in beta.
    • I think they wrote "VMWare Inc." rather than "VMWare" to avoid confusion... because alot of people, when they hear "VMWare" will think of the application/product, and not the company. Yes, I know that it would be hard for a product to release another product, but still. The "Inc." qualifier was just thrown in to make it obvious that they were talking about the company.
    • The video card it emulates is pretty low end. It's acceptable for the old SimCity games (I've tried them) but not for any modern shooter.

      There is also the problem where you're still sharing your CPU with the virtual machine so you may experience pauses in the game. Not really noticable with strategy and turn based games, but it may be a problem with shooters.

      The good news is that you can load up different Windows versions for different games (you do still have the licenses, right?). So you can run Win95 or
    • Games and emulation just don't go together. That applies to pretty much all kinds of emulation - VMWare, Virtual PC, whatever. Games just tend to require performance that emulation can't deliver. Plus games are often picky about hardware such as video cards.

      Of course, this overgeneralizes. If you have some text-based game, or even a graphics one old enough to not strain current hardware, then maybe. But generally speaking, assume that games won't work acceptably.

      I've used VMWare (though it has been a while)

    • Xen is not a competitor to VMWare (Score:5, Interesting)

      by McSpew (316871) on Thursday October 20 2005, @06:08PM (#13840497)

      Sounds like they are feeling pressure from Xen and are trying to prevent the truely free OSS solution from gaining mindshare. They make a good product, but cost and closed source will limit them in the long run.

      Xen is not a competitor to VMWare, at least, not right now, it isn't. Xen requires the guest OS to be built with explicit support for Xen. VMWare doesn't require that. Xen can't run any build of Windows or NetWare, but VMWare can.

      It's clear that this product is a shot across Microsoft's bow. Ever since MS bought Connectix, they've been gunning for VMWare. Those who've tried both VirtualPC and VMWare Workstation have almost universally preferred VMWare Workstation (I haven't tried VirtualPC, but VMWare Workstation rocks), but VirtualPC is still cheaper than VMWare ($129 vs. $199). VMWare has also recently announced that it's hoping to standardize the virtual machine software industry around common VM file formats (VMWare's, of course). If, by using a free VMWare Player, they can get everybody else to adopt their VM formats, they'll have won that war before MS can even get into the battle.

      This doesn't really cannibalize sales of VMWare Workstation, even if others figure out how to create VMWare-compatible VMs from other applications, because those of us who use VMWare Workstation like all of its features (and there are lots). What it really does is seed the market for VMWare's real money makers--GSX Server and ESX Server. MS has nothing close to those products right now, and VMWare's hoping to permanently establish themselves as the market leaders before MS can get a comparable product on the market.

      • Well, here's an MS VPC fan.

        I'll admit, I haven't played with VMWare WS5.

        VPC is also slower, from what I've seen.

        However, VPC emulates more standard hardware that OSes (especially old ones) support out of the box. Important when you're playing with an old OS, and you need driver support.
      • VmWare is feeling a lot of heat from a lot of areas. If you think that Xen is causing VmWare no heat, then you are sadly mistaken. Linux/bsd on xen runs with much less performace penalty than vmware. In addition, there will be shortly, a way to run MS in it, but with a performance penalty. That means, for the occiasional user of windows, this is perfect, and quite a bit cheaper. So yes, xen is very much a competitor to VmWare

        Of course, if you are running lots of windows, then Conenctix will be shortly the
        • I'll try to answer your generic question of:

          If you run X and it comes with Y, why would you use/buy Z?

          In one fell swoop...

          Because Z is leaps and bounds better than Y!

          Why don't Windows users buy Photoshop or Paintshop Pro when MS Paint came for free?!?! Why do Windows users download FireFox when they already have IE? Why buy or use MS Word when you have notepad AND wordpad for free?!?!?!

      • Re:Xen is not a competitor to VMWare (Score:4, Informative)

        by Turtle Master (198910) on Thursday October 20 2005, @07:40PM (#13841101)
        Xen requires the guest OS to be built with explicit support for Xen. VMWare doesn't require that. Xen can't run any build of Windows or NetWare, but VMWare can.

        You haven't been paying attention. Xen will soon be able to run any build of pretty much anything on new "VT-enabled" hardware from intel. http://www.xensource.com/news/pr082305.html [xensource.com]

        • In my experience custom-building isn't a big deal. You just run the config program, and it notes that it doesn't have a compatible kernel module handy, and asks you if you want to build one. As long as you have your kernel sources installed it just builds the module and runs it, and it usually doesn't take much effort. Then you just rerun the config program any time you install a new kernel.

          If you're willing to use vmware on linux I doubt the kernel module will slow you down much...
    • "Sounds like they are feeling pressure from Xen and are trying to prevent the truely free OSS solution from gaining mindshare. They make a good product, but cost and closed source will limit them in the long run."

      I really don't want to be a smart *ss, but whenever I read these sorts of comments here on /. I wonder "just what alternate universe are these people living in?"

      I doubt most of the corporate types at VMware know that Xen even exists - let alone sees it as any sort of "competition".
    • Actually I've been using VMWare Workstation version 2.0x for this purpose for years. I like to keep an eye on the dark-side so when I cruise their boards I have always used a VM to do it from. Anytime they glitch/hack/crack the VM, I would just restore from the snapshot. I'd also work this way anytime I was operating unprotected out their due to a 0-day security hole (Windows or *nix) so I could get my patches, tuck them into my shared folder, get safe again. Heck, I was running DC's on VMWare long befo

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