Gratis Virtualization….
How about operating system virtualisation for FREE!
I came accross this the other day in my hunt for the ability to run a linux distribution without messy installation and having windows having a hissy fit and knackering all my partitions and master boot record at a later date.I came across VMware Player by VMware This allows you to run a wide range of ”appliances” which other people have created in the paid product and distribute them in a pre-configured state. From command line only full LAMP stack appliances. To full desktop workstation configurations.
The blurb from the website:
VMware Player lets you evaluate new or pre-release software contained in virtual machines, without any installation or configuration hassles. You can also share existing virtual machines with colleagues or friends just use VMware Player to run any virtual machine.
A virtual machine is a computer defined in software. It’’s like running a PC on your PC. VMware Player runs any virtual machine created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server. VMware Player also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats.
As I type I am currently running a desktop setup of Blag 50000 (which is a derivitve of Fedora Core 5). You can find out more about Blag here.
Performance seems to be excellent very responsive. The only slight drawback form the paid product that a desktop user would be interested in is the ability to go full screen mode to get maximum native resolution.
All in all I”d recommend this software to anyone looking for a cheap (can”t get cheaper than £0.00) virtualisation solution for the desktop users needs.
