VMWare Inc. Releases Free Virtual Machine Runtime

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."

This could be very cool for demoing Linux apps

[multiplexo]

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.

[RLiegh]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Wondering

[umbrellasd]

Has anyone had luck with running VMWare on Linux and using a virtual machine to play Windows games? I play two online games and they are the only reason that I use Windows as my primary operating system. Not familiar with the performance concerns, but it looks like I could prepare a Windows gaming VM and run it when I game, and then work on other tasks in my preferred Linux environment. Googling...

Re:This could be very cool for demoing Linux apps

[jdray]

How about that I could create a Windows image here at work where we use VMWare (Windows on Windows) and take it home where I would use this free tool that runs on Linux to run occasional Windows apps (Visio or TurboTax)...?

Re:Wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to run Starcraft on it perfectly, including BattleNet games. Of course, we're talking about a game that ran at a playable speed on a 486 machine I built in 1994.

Re:this does what?

[JamesTRexx]

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.

Xen is not a competitor to VMWare

[McSpew]

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.

osx86

[minus_273]

ha now that osx86 installation vmware image you downloaded can run on a leagal copy of vmware!

Re:Xen is not a competitor to VMWare

[bhtooefr]

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.

And in other news...

[williamyf]

Microsoft Released Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio viewers. meanwhile lotus released a viewer for Freelance Graphics.

Now, on a more serious note, This is cool, the "Player" is far more complicated than any viewer/player out there, and the uses for the thing are intriguing. From the Web Page of VMware, collages can work on a support case and all share the same one in a VM, or you can demo apps in the confort of the VM. The page even points to VMs made available by IBM, oracle and others. Of course, question is, What is the Status of the SW that you run in the VMs, including the OS itself? In the case of FOSS, we know the answer, but in other cases, just watc out guys.

Wish they'd finally support OS/2 as well...

[D4C5CE]

...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...

Re:Wondering

[Tiny Elvis]

I had an old game (magic the gathering) that ran on Win 98. I had problems running it on win 2k mainly due to the fact it would run too fast and was unplayable. I heard running in under 98 made it run the proper speed so I setup a Win 98 VMWARE instance to play it. As the others replying have said, you can forget running anything that requires 3d. It makes a great sandbox to test other stuff in though.

Browser Appliance password

[BushCheney08]

Downloaded the player and their browser appliance image. Anyone know what the root password for the browser appliance is? [BTW, it's a very stripped down Ubuntu install, with Firefox, GAIM, BitTorrent, and a Terminal Server Client]

Browser Appliance from USB key

[www-xenu-dot-net]

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

[dosguru]

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.

Re:Existing virtual machines?

[mvdw]

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.

Not entirely accurate

[WindBourne]

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 prefered approach. I would be sutprised if MS does not include connectix for free with all their windows.

So if you run Linux and Xen is bundled automatically, you would pay for VmWare, why? Likewise, if you run Windows, and Connectix is bundled for free, you would use Vmware why?

Sad to say, I am guessing that VmWare is likely to be netscaped.

Re:see, now I'm gonna try linux..

[Chasuk]

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!

Re:Existing virtual machines?

[kju]

Just use this [gnu.org] to create an empty vmdk-file. Boot virtual machine from CD-ROM and install OS.

Re:Wondering

[TheBeowulf]

First, anything is possible with the latest incarnations of VMWare workstation. VMWare even has "experimental" 3D rendering capabilities that do allow 3D games to run in the virtual world at a mere 20% performance hit. Now, here is the caveat and it is a big one... The 3D package requires direct ties to your video card drivers to handle the VM's DirectX calls. This is a gift and a curse... it means you're still stuck running a windows Host OS and you have to have a stable driver set.

It is my guess that Linux support as the Host will come to nVidia card owners long before ATI owners; mostly due to ATI's abysmal 3D Linux driver set to date.

I personally have experimented with these tools and basically found that for the games that ran only in win95/98 and choke on 2000/XP, running XP as the host and older versions of windows as the Guest yielded a playable effort. For now, think of this as an early release capability... it's about as usable as any other "pre-release" emulator. (PSX, PS2 Xbox, etc) I have also found that sound can be an issue if the game doesn't accept DirectX control, as the emulated sound card in VMWare doesn't support direct-mapped calls.

Re:Not entirely accurate

[DaHat]

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:Response to new alternatives

[tylernt]

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 dog slow. However the QEMU UI is dreadful (command line based) and the networking setup is arcane and poorly documented compared to VMWare though. Fortunately there are add-on UIs for QEMU to address one of those issues, and for the other I just stuck eth0 in a bridge and hacked the QEMU network script to create tun/tap devices and insert them into my bridge automatically. If those two things were addressed out-of-the-box, QEMU would be a much more polished product. Fast? No, but it gets the job done.

Linux really is a cancer!

[Anonymous Coward]

The smart thing to do now would be to make Xen and Qemu compatible with the VMware Reader images then start putting up VMware images of all the different Linux distributions on the torrent and ftp sites. The cancer will start spreading to even more machines. No need to dual-boot or reboot to a LiveCD. Just double-click and leave Linux running all of the time!

Re:see, now I'm gonna try linux..

[afidel]

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 =)

_Very_ good move by VMWare

[imemyself]

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.

Re:osx86

[Macka]

Actually I'm hoping that VMware will port their products to the new osx86 when it ships. I'd love to have the choice to run Linux & Windows in VMware on my first x86 Apple Mac when I get one.