Re: VMWare player: why no package?
On Wednesday 02 January 2008, Carl Fink wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 01, 2008 at 09:52:36PM -0500, Andrew Malcolmson wrote:
> > On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 20:46:47 -0500, "Carl Fink" <carl@finknetwork.com>
> >
> > said:
> > > VMWare Player's source has been released. Does anyone know why it
> > > isn't packaged for Debian? Should I just submit an RTP?
> > > --
> >
> > FYI: a similar program 'Virtual Box' is packaged for Debian.
>
> I got VMWare Player going at the expense of a very irritating kernel
> rebuild. The advantage of VMWare is their packaging utility that converts
> existing Windows installations into VMs, and their tools (special video and
> mouse drivers) that let the VM blend seamlessly with X. I don't see
> mention of these things for VirtualBox.
>
> Gripe: I had to rebuild the kernel because VMWare Player requires certain
> kernel modules, and they don't ship prebuilt ones for Debian. Their
> installer will then try to compile them, but they GCC build has to match
> the GCC used to compile the kernel, and Debian kernels are compiled with a
> significantly older GCC than is included in Testing.
>
> Why? Why can't modules be compiled with a different compiler, for one?
> I'm sure there's a good reason but as a non-C programmer I don't know what
> it is.
>
> Also, why would the kernels be compiled with an obsolete GCC when clearly
> the current one works (because I'm typing this on a box running a kernel
> compiled with 4.2.1-6)?
>
> VMWare Player works great, by the way.
> --
> Carl Fink nitpicking@nitpicking.com
>
> Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com. Reviews! Observations!
> Stupid mistakes you can correct!
anyone know what kernels the VMware modules compile under? Last I checked it
did't work with current kernels and I'm stuck at 2.6.20, although I haven't
tried it lately with newer kernels.
BTW - I find the VMware Plaver very usefull: at home I run XP on my Linux host
to do my home banking (win only software). At work I run Debian on an XP
host. I find that I can easily transfer guest systems between Linux and XP
hosts and the guests run stable at almost native speeds.
Chris
--
C. Hurschler
Reply to: