VMware Appliances with Linux

For many people they are a little reluctant to create a dual boot system with Linux and Windows but they still want to learn Linux better before making the full switch. With VMware Player you can install any Linux operating system on your Windows machine and learn Linux while also having Windows available. This tutorial is aimed at providing a description of the new features included with VMware Player version 2.  

New features included in the VMware version 2 include Windows Vista support which is huge. Users can now use Windows Vista as host and guest operating system through the VMware player. Another big feature is USB 2.0 support so you can access those MP3 players and storage devices. If the virtual machine has shared folders enabled, you can move your files between host and guest operating systems. The virtual machine must be preconfigured with shared folders enabled, and with the path specified to the designated shared folder on the host operating system. Shared folders are disabled by default in VMware Player. When you open a virtual machine with shared folders in VMware Player you will get a  notification message telling you that shared folders have been disabled. this same window will tell you how to turn this feature back on. The welcome page was also a very nice addition with the option to brows, open or download virtual machines.

You can download the latest version of the VMware player here or view the release notes.

Also a few sites have sprouted up that offer VMware Player virtual appliances for Linux distribution downloads. Bagside.com, Virtualappliances.net, ThoughtPolice.

But before we get ahead of ourselves with the appliances lets download the player.

Step #1: Download VMware Player

The VMware Player is free to use and has great functionality. The current version is 2.0.4.

System Requirements:
Basically you should have 1 GM of RAM on your machine to get good functionality.

Again here is the link to download the Player. Download Player

When you download you must choose the version that will work for your operating system. You will see an application with an exe file like this when it is downloaded.

Double-click the program to install it on your system. When you are done you will see an icon on your desktop or you can start the program by going to the menu.

When you start the program it will look like this:

Step #2: Download Virtual Machines

You will need to download the virtual machine of choice., there are thousands of them available. Here is the link to download virtual appliances. Click Here

When you download the virtual appliance of choice it will look like this:

As you can see there are various versions of how they will be compressed when you download them. I would suggest that you download Winzip as it has a trial version and can handle all of these different methods of compression. There are other free versions of other agents that work just as well. Expand and place the contents in a location that you will remember. When the files are expanded you will see a file with the extension .vmx. This is the file you want to open so you can run a virtual machine.

When you select and .vmx file it will start the startup process of the Linux version you choose. Here is a version of CentOS 5 server running in the command mode or runlevel 3. It functions just like the real thing.

Here is Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon running the Desktop version.