Re: vmware vmserver 2 is avail
On Sat, 2008-09-27 at 18:25 +0000, Michael Perry wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:40:05 +0200, David Sanders wrote:
> > On Thursday 25 September 2008 17:51, Damon L. Chesser wrote:
> >> @dam-main:~$ uname -r
> >> 2.6.26.cybo.2.0
> >>
> >> @dam-main:~$ dpkg -l |grep vmware
> >> ii vmware-workstation 6.5.0-110069
> >> VMware Workstation
> >> ii xserver-xorg-video-vmware 1:10.16.2-1
> >> X.Org X server -- VMware display driver
> >>
> >
> > Is workstation worth $189 when there are free alternatives?
> >
> >
> That's a good question. I downloaded the latest workstation update since I
> already have the 6.x release of VMware Workstation. VMware Workstation has
> the so-called Unity feature which lets guest windows run on the host system
> without seeing the entire guest OS desktop. Is that worth the price of admission?
> Secondly, there is a redone installation process if you download the tarball
> where it does the install within some kind of gui'ey window. But for me, and
> the reason I took it off; is that Unity really requires a heftier piece of
> hardware than what I have. I have Thinkpad T43s running Ubuntu and
> Debian TEsting with 1 and 1.5gb of memory. The performance hit after updating
> was pretty significant. You can run VMware Player that comes with Workstation
> 6.5 in "unity mode" as well. But everything slows way down.
>
> One other thing which I just noticed in any VM session which perhaps never did work
> is that I can never get RPC over HTTPs for Outlook 2007 to work on any VM session on
> Server, Workstation, etc. I'm still puzzling that one. With the same setup on a native
> Windows Vista system, I can connect to our EXchange 2007 server with no problems.
> Anybody know why this may be happening?
>
> The big answer is that Workstation is a nice free upgrade Imo. Its not really
> worth the price of admission if you have "lesser hardware" and want Unity.
> If you want to pay for a nice installer it may be a nice upgrade path :)
>
> What are the other things that people feel are reasonable features that
> they upgraded to 6.5 or bought 6.5 for?
I myself am getting very irate at VMware (and I am a VCP). They are so
windows centric. Just today, trying to install some OSs for testing in
workstation 6.5 I had strange windows selection out of vmware. The only
fix was to restart X. Nothing INSIDE the windows of linux could be
selected, just the tool bar menus. Sometimes you will lose your special
keys on the keyboard (just things like Shift, ctrl, alt, all function
keys, etc) and the only fix is to restart X.
I am looking at xen (seems rather complicated to set up) and kvm (very
easy to set up) to answer my VM needs. I have not had the time to put
much into yet, but it looks promising.
In testing xen was neck and neck with ESX vms in performance speed. I
think the only thing VMware has now is management tools and with things
like Bluebears Kodiac and a few others, that will also change.
Workstation 6.5 is adequate for what I use it for, but it is very
unproductive to have to stop and restart X every so often. I suspect
xen and kvm will work just as well with out those issues.
--
Damon L. Chesser <damon@damtek.com>
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