[WBEL-users] VMWare

[Edward Rudd]

On Wed, 2005-03-09 at 11:15, Daniel J. Summers wrote:
> I'm thinking about saving up the money to purchase VMWare, so I can run 
> the few Windows apps that I can't get working with wine under Linux 
> without having to reboot.  $189 is pretty pricey for an individual, 
> though - before I spend that money, I wanted to hear from some 
> experienced VMWare users.

I've been using VMWare since the product was first released, and in my
opinion it's worth the money. (though when I first bought it, it was $75
for the "hobbiest" version which they just turned into the current
workstation, plus 3 upgrades of $30-40)

> Does it really support *everything* the way a system usually would?  
> Would it recognize USB devices that Linux doesn't?  (I'm thinking in 
> particular about my scanner - although I could probably get a new 
> scanner for a lot less than $189.  ;>  )  I also would like to run 
> Fujitsu COBOL (which I have the Windows version) and Paint Shop Pro 5 
> (an older version, but it does what I need it to, and it's paid for).  
> IE would be nice, too, just so I can see how my web pages look without 
> having to VNC to my wife's computer to do it.

it works like a real machine.. it has a Phoenix bios, emulates a SB PCI
sound card, an IDE bus w/ cdrom and harddrives, or the harddrives can
run over one of two emulated SCSI controllers. and it emulates a USB
interface and an amd pcnet32 NIC.  The video card it emulates is a
generic VESA 2.0, and there are VMWare specific drivers for windows,
linux, and freebsd guests.

I've tried a few USB devices under it (namely a USB harddrive and a USB
smart card reader that, at the time, weren't supported under linux, but
now are).  the new VMware 5 (still in beta) supports more video type USB
devices now.

Now, I am personally using vmware to run *test* oses (for development). 
as I have a complete clone install of WBEL in VMware that mimics my real
server installs except it has the compilers and development libraries
installed so I can build RPMS and develop on the system. I also do have
a 2k install for testing some of the apache modules I write in windows,
as well as testing my websites in IE (and I use pearpc to test them in
safari:-D)

I'd say go download either VMWare 4.5, or the VMWare 5.0 beta and get
the free 30 day Evaluation license  and try it out and see if it works
the way you want it to.

> I'm also all-ears if you know of another emulator-type product that 
> works well.  Thanks!

There is also win4lin, which only runs windows as the guest (where
vmware will windows, linux, solaris, netware, and freebsd), not sure on
the price and haven't actually been able to test it as they didn't offer
an evaluation version last time I checked.

-- 
Edward Rudd <eddie at omegaware.com>
Website http://www.outoforder.cc/