[KLUG Members] VMWare 5.5 Stability

[greenproc]

zdennis wrote:
> I am looking into utilizing VMWare for our developers whom run linux as a host operating system to be able to utilize VMWare 5.5
> to have windows installed. We currently have two developers utilizing the 30 day workstation trial. One user is running Debian
> Unstable/Testing hybrid and it works great. The other is running the same but on a 64-bit machine (although running in 32-bit
> compatibility mode) and he has been able to get TinyFeather Linux to install in the VMWare Workstation, but Windows continually
> gets stuck at different points during the installation.
> 
> Anyone here vouch for VMWare on debian as a host for Windows 2000, Windows XP ? Any known issues and known workarounds ? Any other
> distro's that you run as a host that work great?

Can't vouch for VMWare Workstation, but Server (beta) has worked very well for me under Debian/stable under i386.  The only problem with being
under Debian at the time (beta1) is an incompatability in the 64bit perl libraries -- which won't prevent you from running a 64 bit host, but it
will prevent you from using the console on the 64 bit host to connect/manage guests from the host's console -- not a problem for "production"
where you would be running the console on 32 bit clients, but it is a problem for connecting to a guest from the host for 64 bit hosts.  You may
wish to try the server beta, and the perl problem may now be fixed (on beta2).  I have used Win2000 and Fedora5 guests.

Which different points does Windows get stuck at on the 64-bit machine you spoke of?  I have found that SuSE works very well as a host OS for
VMWare.  The main issues I have run into are regarding compiling the vmware kernel modules, and having incomplete/incompatable build
environments -- any host OS that VMWare ships pre-compiled kernel modules for is likely to have less issues.

> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Zach
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