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By Kevin Lyda

Wow. Just downloaded and installed the new version of VMWare. Not simple to install, but that's the only weak point I see. Before I go into how the install went, let me first say why I'm using it.

I'm mainly a unix developer. I find it much easier to develop on unix systems, and most of my career has been spend developing unix apps. My last few companies however seem to think providing NT workstations is an improvement. Worse still the corporate applications run under NT. So NT must be dealt with.

Enter VMWare. It allows me to run NT applications, test the portability of my unix related code, and still run unix (linux) under it all. Ah, back in the comfy open pastures of the command line.

So I now have a nice NT install squeezed onto a 400m file on a linux filesystem with full access to the network. How hard was it to set up? Simple.

First you need a license. You can get an evaluation license or buy one. It's just $75 (about £55) for a personal use license, or $199 for a full license. The evaluation license is free, and as far as I know it's full featured (but expires).

The next step depends on what you'll use it for, but in my case I downloaded the vmware application, the X server they've tweaked (and passed the changes back to the XFree86 team) and the VMWare tools package.

Untar the application and install it (there's an INSTALL file that explains how - it's rather easy but an rpm option would have been better). Install the Xserver for your system (again, a README in the Xserver tar file explains how). Then install Windows NT. Even this is relatively painless. The VMWare web pages provide excellent support here, but the quick version is to slap in a bootable NT install CD, run VMWare, answer the VMWare configuration wizard's questions, and then "boot" the virtual machine into an NT install. I used bridged networking by the way, and NT acquires it's IP address via DHCP.

After NT is installed a final performance booster is to install the VMWare tools on the NT install. I mounted my home directory on my linux box via samba from the NT machine and ran the install process that way, but you could just as easily download the VMWare tools from NT directly. Either way the install is pretty straight forward though a bit manual at the end when you have to get the Display Control Panel to load the VMWare video driver. A clearly written Notepad file (the setup program quits leaving that open) holds your hand though.

The result is a rather peppy NT box running on your Linux box. I use a Pentium II here, so I'm not sure of it's performance elsewhere. Those of you who do s/w testing on NT might want to look into the non-persistant disk options (install a virgin NT system once and then never have to do it again). If you like to do kernel development or try out linux distributions, VMWare seems quite capable (though it does have problems with weird floppy geometries ala Toms rtbt disk).

One of the things that impressed me the most was the hint screen I got on startup. VMWare detected that I was running Enlightenment and a 3.3.1 Xserver. It then let me know that the combination of those with VMWare would exercise a bug in the Xserver and that it would implement a workaround and suggested I download their version of the Xserver (with the bug fixed).

Also their hint system itself is impressive. You can turn them all off, or just turn them off as they appear. Simple to configure but allows for very personalized systems.

So if you need access to NT apps from your linux box, or if you have any other intel based OS's you'd like to run on your linux box, this is most definitely the way to go. Oh, check the web pages at www.vmware.com because it does have a few OS's it doesn't support (notably BeOS).

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