Most people probably know about this product but last time I was at the web page, there was only like 5 virtual machines to choose from! Now there are 9 pages of them!!!

http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/

This is a freeware version of vmware that acts as a player only so people can share their virtual machines that were created by installing an OS in vmware! So when you load one up, a freshly installed OS will boot up.

Here is what I would say to people who have not tried linux yet:


Thinking of trying Linux? Don't want to give up Windows? Affraid to setup a dual boot system? Rebooting to run a live CD to much hassle? Not sure which distro?

Try VMWare player and run dozens of distro's right in windows without rebooting!

That my attempt at hype (LOL) but what is it really like?

downloaded VMware-player-1.0.1-19317.exe (28.2mb)
downloaded debian-31r0a-i386-netinst-kernel2.6.zip (114mb)
installed vmware player
unzipped debian
ran vmware player and loaded debian
it booted into like a final setup stage
selected regional/account options, etc
it is downloading updates and other packages now!

I guess I should have picked a larger virtual machine if I didn't want to wait for a bunch of updates!

The download page for the debian I picked went to another page and it looked all like torrents but I seen there were http mirrors on closer look! There was a built in 2 minute delay on the http download to reduce server load but the download was fast once started.

It looks like Ubuntu browser Appliance is still the flagship product for VMWare player so I guess I'll download next!

The interesting thing I have found is you can easily edit the config file for a downloaded virtual machine and point it to a new .iso source and reinstall the virtual machine. There are several posts on vmware's support forums about this also and according to them it does not voilate their license as long as you licensed to use the guest and host OS so they don't mind. You have to search for some of the config file options sometimes but it works pretty well.
The player is also slightly faster than the workstation product, which should really help out anyone trying to run something under windows (i.e. trying out linux) as I have found that virtual machines under windows are quite slower than under linux.