New to virtual computing

Y

Yossarian22

[H]ard|Gawd
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Apr 27, 2009
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Hello, I'm new to virtual computing (however I understand the benefits of it from a business to home perspective) and this fall I will be going to a school (RIT, BS in Computer Science) that primarily uses Sun (well, now Oracle) Solaris as the primary operating system.

Instead of just getting another machine, creating another partition... doing any of that kind of PITA crap, I figured I would virtualize.

I'm trying to use Windows Virtual PC 2007, however, I can see it is clearly not designed for operating systems other than Windows in mind. I saw hacks on how to get Solaris and Linux working on it, but then I had a friend tell me VMware Workstation was free?

The problem is, I can't find the link for the "free" VMware Workstation and I have my guest OS ready to be created, but it wants licensing information... etc...

Is there a free version of VMware Workstation floating around their website? If so where can I find it?

Thanks in advance, hope to learn more about virtual computing as it seems to be growing with the advent and cheapness of multicore processors, higher RAM, cheaper hard disks for RAID, etc...
 
Umm, AFAIK, there's no free version of VMWare Workstation. I think your friend meant VMWare Player or VMWare Server, both of which are free.

An even more simplistic and still free option would be Virtualbox.

Make sure to read the stickied Virtualization FAQ.
 
Danny Bui said:
Umm, AFAIK, there's no free version of VMWare Workstation. I think your friend meant VMWare Player or VMWare Server, both of which are free.

An even more simplistic and still free option would be Virtualbox.

Make sure to read the stickied Virtualization FAQ.
Click to expand...

Hello, Danny Bui, I didn't know you frequented this part of the forum as well.

I'm assuming VMWare Player kinda "sucks" compared to VMWare Workstation, Server, and Virtualbox?

edit: did read
 
Player is most of the workstation engine (realtime emulation) in a simple package without a lot of the advanced features/networking controls etc.
 
VirtualBox supports solaris, give that a shot. It's very easy to use and there is a ton of documentation of it online.
 
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Not a fan of the new VMware Server setup. I'd go with Virtualbox if you're looking for free.
 
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