VMware Player Changes Everything

In the words of the immortal Joey -- "whoa." I just learned of, and tried, the new VMware Player. If you haven't heard of it yet, VMware player is a free program for Windows and Linux users that allows them to run a single VM on their host OS. VMware Player is like a stripped down version of VMware Workstation. It does not support snapshots, and the documentation says only one VM can run at a time (despite what the comparison chart implies).

This changes everything. Everyone who is an end user of VMs (not a creator) just saved $189 for a VMware Workstation license. This includes students who use VMware on their class desktops or laptops. Authors can now distribute VMs with books (like a second edition of Real Digital Forensics?) and have readers access those VMs with the free VMware Player.

I tried one of the freely available images in the Virtual Machine Center -- the Browser-Appliance. As you can see from the screen shot below, it's an Ubuntu Linux distro.

I have not tried any of the innovative hacks involving VM files, but I would like to evaluate them. I'm considering building VM of a complete Sguil installation using FreeBSD 6.0 and Sguil 0.6.0 when available. This approach easily avoids the problems with building and maintaining live CDs!

I applaud VMware for providing this free no-cost program. It is obviously an attempt to build market share and direct attention away from Microsoft's product. (The two were compared in a recent NWC review.)

How do you plan to use VMware Player?