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Want to learn linux, but don’t want to repartition your hard drive? Want to test code on 3 or 4 different operating systems without rebooting? Well, you may want to try out EasyVMX. I had been wanting to have a good excuse to try out virtualization, but didn’t have a good one. Then EasyVMX came along and voila - now I had my excuse.
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First of, some of you may not know about virtualization. Virtualization basically allows you to set up a “virtual” machine on a computer that is already running an operating system. So, if you are running XP - you can run an entirely different operating system in a virtual machine player window. This window has a self-contained operating system that is “virtual” - it’s running like it normally would run as a stand alone operating system. Check out my picture above. I have Win2k3 server and ubuntu linux running on my XP machine. You can run more than one of these boxes - but not without taking a substantial hit to your system resources. Best of all - this is all free!
First things first - do as EasyVMX says and download VMWare’s free player!
Now, what you want to do is go to EasyVMX and run through the easyvmx wizard (under “Create Machine” - “easyvmx”). Select the guest operating system that you want to install. Keep all the defaults at first. This will minimize errors. Download the created zip file. Extract it and name it after the operating system to keep them straight. Now, open the folder and the my virtual machine folder. Insert the operating system installation disk that you created this virtual machine for (the guest operating system you chose in the wizard). And yes, you need the installation disk! Click on the file with the .vmx extension. This will start the vm player. Now, run through the OS installation, just like installing on a real machine. That’s it! Now you have an OS that you can run anytime without rebooting.
I haven’t played around with the OS’s too much, but there are so many uses. You have full network and peripheral support. You can practice network security scenarios. You can play around with linux while maintaining system stability. You can work entirely on linux (yes, vmware has a linux version of its player for linux!) and use a virtual machine for windows. Also, when you close the player, it maintains system state. That means that if you close the virtual machine while typing a letter, it will be available next time you open the virtual machine. That’s a neat feature. Go check it out!
[tags]EasyVMX, VMWare, virtualization, virtual machines, vmx, virtual machine player[/tags]
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