cl@isbd.net wrote:
That essentially means that VM Player is essentially useless unless you also have at least VM Server somewhere to create an image. This isn't at all clear from the VM site, it sounds as if downloading VM Player is something that, by itself, might be useful. Are any of the 'ready made' system images from the VM site useful?
Mostly yes to all of the above. The point is that it allows people to create a share VMs and have "normal" people use them. So (for example) you can download a pre-made IPCop image to play with, or whatever. There are a lot of pre-made images out there to play with.
The interesting thing is that ultimately all you're doing is playing with a pre-installed (virtual) PC, so you can re-install it, and you can probably find a "bare" virtual machine to install to, from within VMPlayer (well that's my understanding anyway). You just can't change its hardware config.
Or you can create the image using server, or using the 30-day trial of the workstation product. The images are transferable between products (and between PCs).
I definitely feel that it's very poorly explained on the VM site, and that 'server' isn't really a good name for VM Server.
I agree on the first but not the second: it really does operate as a server. I perhaps didn't describe it very well.
How difficult is it to create VM system images of 'non supported' operating systems?
Generally no problem. You have a virtual machine, you an do what you like with it. The issue is drivers. A basic VM tends to have hardware that is well supported by all distros these days, but ultimately if your virtual ethernet card has no driver for your distro then you're stuck. The hardware it emulates should be on the site somewhere but I'll look it up if you're stuff (I'm rushing this emai as I should be somewhere else right now!)
I would be *very* surprised if you had any problems getting slackware running. Indeed, google for "vmware slackware appliance" and you'll find some Slackware-based virtual machines (you'd probably want to roll your own though).
VMWare mean "supported" in the sense of "it may well work but our support department can't help if it doesn't". Since the free product presumably isn't "supported" in that sense anyway it makes little difference. By emulating a full PC with a full set of hardware, anything which has drivers for that hardware should just work. Just remember its the emulated hardware that matters, not your own.