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VMWare 3.0 beta report for Linux-IL readers



Hi people,

Since yours trully still doesn't have a job, so I'm playing a bit with some 
hardware I got here and with some new Linux apps - so if you want - here are 
2 good news:

VMWare 3.0 beta is out (and can be obtained from the VMWare web site)..

I have installed Windows XP as a guest on my machine (AMD 800Mhz, 320MB RAM, 
Matrox G400, XFree 4.0.3, kernel 2.4.8-ac2)..

Does it worth the upgrade? yes. BUT - I've seen some upgrade problems moving 
from VMWare 2.0 to 3.0 - so the best option will be to backup your virtual 
hard disk and upgrade, or install your guest OS from scratch (I tried the 
upgrade on Windows ME - and once I enabled the USB - it recognized tons of 
new hardware - and crashed my WinME guest)..

So - whats new? lets see..

First - it's WAY faster then 2.0 - I'll give it around 50-80% speed increase. 
I installed XP as a guest because XP is very heavy OS. VMWare wasn't excited, 
and the speed impression was really good.

Be careful - there is a new VMWare tools for the 3.0 which I found not 
backward compatible with 2.0.

Graphis - now you can either set your guess OS to run in a specific bit 
planes (bpp) or work as usual like 2.0. It's also knows to switch resolution 
when you change the resolution.

Sound - sorry, still the same problems as 2.0 - lets hope they'll fix it on 
the next beta

CD-ROM - now it's supporting CD-R/CD-RW (I didn't test it yet), as well as CD 
images (like ISO), and coming soon on the next beta - DVD-ROM and DVD+RW. I 
haven't played with it much yet.

USB - VMWare 3.0 now supports USB out of the box on the Guest OS - ONLY if 
your host OS doesn't have modules loaded for it - so only 1 can use it - 
either Guest or Host. WebCams are not supported yet. I tried USB palm crade 
and it worked. Remember - you do need the windows drivers if you want to use 
it in Windows as a guest.

In order to use USB you should have "/proc" filesystem compiled in the 
kernel, and usbdevfs as module. You should also have a line like this in 
/etc/modules.conf

# USB Stuff
alias usb-controller usb-uhci

and in /etc/fstab

none                    /proc/bus/usb           usbdevfs  defaults      0  0 

After you have this - you can select from the "Devices" menu in the VMWare 
menu which USB devices your guest OS should "see" - up to 2 USB devices..

I/O system - much much faster. Also virtual hard drive images can be up to 
128GB for IDE drives, and 256GB for SCSI devices. 

Network: Adapters - up to 8 can be assigned, and there is built in NAT 
functionality.

And last - mouse movement is MUCH smoother then before, and if you're guest 
is running in a window - you can now press CTRL ALT to get your 
mouse/keyboard back.

Upgrade pricing - unknown yet.

Hope this helps to some people here..

-- 
Hetz Ben Hamo
hetz@kde.org

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