Vmware Player- a free in cost way to try Linux in Win

[realthor 0]

I'm sure you know of this as it was released on dec 12 as far as i can remmember.It's an application that is able to run VMware images so that if you've got such an image you can run Linux inside Windows and vice-versa and i guess other oses too as well as any application image(if provided).

So if you are a Windows user and want to try some Linux distribution from within your Operating System then this is a free cost solution, just download the player and the distribution iso's VMware image and load it into the player. Of course this works with livecds/dvds otherwise you'll have to install it to a virtual partition to get it run - more complicated for a "just wanna see" guy. But there's a solution for you too: there is a website that holds many pre-installed linux(and co) distributions where u can download a torrent file and run it directly from your HDD- much faster than from a liveCD.

The link to this page is http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ ;

For Linux users this is also nice to load Windows or other OS from their distro if they want and i've read that it runs faster than the reverse case. Of course that for other linux distros one could use XEN but it doesn't support Windows due to licenses.

Cheers,
realThor.

[michaelper22 0]

I tried running an ISO image on my hard drive and a burned Knoppix Live CD, and neither of them worked. I don't have the time or patience to download yet another .iso, so are there any other alternatives?

[realthor 0]

Sorry to hear that. I'm also a Linux baby trying to learn but you need patience and a little determination, didn't you have patience learning windows?Of course you had no other choice but you were forced someway to have patience and learn it step by step. Linux too requires some patience, of course now you're free to choose and yes it's a little more difficult but as back then you were a windows newbie now you are pretty familiarized with computers and the learning should be easier.As about those images on freezoo only one-that i've tested for fun:ReactOS- worked for me, the others have some image types not supported by vmware player or at least i don't know how to make them work. They are made for qemu but that should work fine for vmware too.Can anybody give here a help?

[realthor 0]

i've managed to run damn small linux under vmware player following the minitutorial at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ and just one small modification i did: everywhere it writes windowsXPPro or so place whatever you want i put 'dsl' without quotes and where it writes guestOS i wrote first dsl but it gave me an error like 'dsl not supported' and i replaced that with otherlinux (which value i've found on the same page under comments) and it booted and entered dsl very fast. I could post a picture but i don't know how.
It only seems that mouse's moving not too good which gets me wondering wahat is the speed loss. Anyway i'll come with news.Now i'm goin to sleep.
Good Night!

[Inspiron 0]

Erm, I don't think VMware player reads the normal ISO files.. Rather it reads VMware's images so you got to convert the iso files into vmware images somehow. If you downloaded the Linux distributions as ISO files, you cannot run them directly because you will need to install Linux from the ISO files first, then copy out the installed partition into vmware images..

[realthor 0]

VMware player reads vmware's vmdk, virtual PC's vmk and Symantec LiveState Recovery Files' sv2i . No other virtualizer will run .iso images as i know because the virual machine needs some more info that is provided in the VM player's case by an .vmx text file and a .vmdk file wich emulates a virual partition and so on.First you have to generate this virtual partition with qemu (a free one)which can generate vdmk files and then you edit the .vmx file very easily and eventually point to a HDD .iso image instead of the cd-rom.It is very simple thou but while trying the same procedure at work i encountered a problem: the vmplayer won't recognize my live-cd linux (there is one cd-rom and a cd-writer here).I tried many hacks but wasn't successful.The virtual machine is booting but not finding a cd-rom it tries to search on the network an operating system which of course isn't there.So it fails loading any os.But i'll make some more experimenting at home later today and try even to install kubuntu on my virtual drive under VMplayer.

[michaelper22 0]

Sorry to hear that. I'm also a Linux baby trying to learn but you need patience and a little determination, didn't you have patience learning windows?Of course you had no other choice but you were forced someway to have patience and learn it step by step. Linux too  requires some patience, of course now you're free to choose and yes it's a little more difficult but as back then you were a windows newbie now you are pretty familiarized with computers and the learning should be easier.

 

As about those images on freezoo only one-that i've tested for fun:ReactOS- worked for me, the others have some image types not supported by vmware player or at least i don't know how to make them work. They are made for qemu but that should work fine for vmware too.Can anybody give here a help?

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I've been using windows since Windows 3.1 (although I was quite young at the time-5 or 6 years old). I've used every version since then (95, 98, ME, 200 at school, XP at home and at relative's homes), and the knowledge has come to me over many years. I did have 2 1/2 hours of patience installing SuSE linux, but my patience is geenerally rather limited. BTW, can I use the VM player on Windows 98 to run SuSE linux from a partition of it's own?