Which Virtualization system ? secure ?

Hello all,

I am running windows 7 on my laptop. Now I want to try Linux flavors also(Ubuntu, Fedora) so thinking to use virtualization like VMWare.

Which vendor provides free virtualization software?

Is there any free version of VMWare desktop edition?

Thanks for any information.

VMWare Player is free (as in $). When last I used it, one could not use it to create a new VM. There are many available for download, and there are online utilities to do so.
VirtualBox by Sun/Oracle is free (as in source code).

I run VMWare Server 2 on my Win7 boxes. It is free. On my laptop I have XP and Ubuntu VMs. On my desktop I have XP, two versions of Ubuntu, Fedora, and Windows Server 2008 as client VMs.

WARNING: FireFox 3.6.x is not compatible with VMWare Server 2 - you will not be able to open a console window. I had to revert to Firefox 3.5.x to acccess my client VMs.

Thanks Joe and Peter

I have installed VMWare Player 3.0.1 (90 MB).

I have Ubuntu Installation DVD, Can I install it in VMWare Player? or I have to use existing VMWare virtual file?

Thanks

As Joe has mentioned, with VMware Player you can't create a VMware image. You can only use it to run the VMware image.

Why don't you try VirtualBox? It's free and quite popular, too.

Freddy Wong wrote:As Joe has mentioned, with VMware Player you can't create a VMware image. You can only use it to run the VMware image.

Just to be clear, one can create a new VM for VMWare Player with the Virtual Machine Creator I pointed to in my previous post.

I just installed VirtualBox on my Win7 machine last night and installed Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit on it. Quite pleased thus far. On top of all that I installed DeskSpace to give my Windows machine virtual desktops (like Linux and Mac already have and have had for years). I put my virtualized Ubuntu on one desktop in full screen mode and I can easily switch between it and windows with a quick flick of some keys.

Here is a screenshot

I heartily agree with using a virtual desktop manager, and placing the client virtual OS on one of the desktops and then switching between the client OS(es) and Windows. It still amazes (or is that appalls?) me that Windows does not include a virtual desktop manager.

I use AltDesk, not as spiffy as the DeskSpace cube, but serviceable (it was the best option I could find when I first searched for virtual desktop managers about 7 or 8 years ago, and I have gotten all of my updates for free since I originally purchased it back then).

Today I installed VMWare Player 3.0.1 and Installed Ubuntu 9.10 desktop edition from dvd.

I am amazed with the smoothness of installation in VMWare and network connectivity.

VMWare detects network and USB drive automatically.! no configuration required.

Thanks all for your thoughts.