All that sophisticated hardware, but only Win10?
1 Like
Some very expensive sophisticated hardware!!!
That RX570 amd card is $500., and it probaby has no Linux support at present.
Where did you hear or read that?
Thereâs all kiinds of products sold by VMware (who also own EMC storage - and I think the whole kit and kaboodle is called Dell EMC).
It started off with the product that became VMware workstation - e.g. you could run it (there werenât any processor extensions for vitualization, and most processors were still single core, except for a few Pentium IV which did hyperthreading) on your Windows 2000 or XP (dunno if it ever ran on 95, 98 or ME) and run another x86 O/S. There was already another similar product around called âVirtual PCâ (which Microsoft eventually bought and it eventually became âHyperVâ) - but VMware killed it in performance and usability.
- VMware Workstation (on Windows and Linux desktop)
- VMware Player (the above, but mostly for running re-rolled appliances - it was sorta âfreeâ - on Windows and Linux desktop)
- Around this time they brought out ESX (which was VMware âserverâ running on a Linux kernel - these days that Linux O/S is called Photon)
- Also had a product called VMware GSX (but I never tried it and know nothing about it)
- Then they also had addons to manage fleets of ESX installs - vSphere and vCenter.
- They also had VMware Fusion for MacOS (only on the 2006+ intel Macs) - and I think theyâre yet to catch up to Apple Silicon (I use UTM on my M1 Macs)
At nearly all times, they had VMware Workstation, and VMware Player available to run on BOTH Windows and Linux.
My experience with Ubuntu started around the time that VMware released âPlayerâ and a âfreeâ marketplace to download pre-rolled VM âappliancesâ. I found one called âBrowser Applianceâ - it was Ubuntu 4.x with pretty much just Firefox installed⌠It was around that time I jumped from SUSE SLES as my primary Linux to UbuntuâŚ
OK, so what my mate has must be VMware Workstation. He has RHEL and Win10. His hardware was custom built, so I thought VMware was just the OS.
You seem to say VMware involves special hardware?
Anyway, its very non-FOSS, but its supposed to be the most functional VM setup. My mate has no complaints.
Vmware Workstaion was never free, not even sure if Vmware Player is free. Vmware as always been business oriented.
2 Likes
It used to be - but then they found out people were using it anyway - to run VMâs - thereâs workarounds to install a VM inside the Player (vs download a virtual appliance)⌠ITâs still fairly âpermissiveâ - i.e. not as enforcing as VMware Workstation licensingâŚ
In theory, or even in practice - itâs possible to run VMware ESX for âfreeâ. If youâve got dedicated hardware - itâs possible, just deploy VMâs to it with the WEBUI.
ITâs when you want to learn the stuff that enterprises / businesses do, which hold farms and server racks full of VMware ESX, is a product to manage it all - e.g. do failover, disaster recovery, then youâre going to be shelling out hundreds of K per annum for vSphere and vCenter, and in some cases even more if you buy some third party solutions, like VEEAMâŚ
1 Like
Did you try to run a Linux distro on your (old) Macs). Should be possible and be great on Mac machines.
Frank in County Wicklow - Ireland
No - never saw the point in Mac when it was on commodity Intel CPU hardware - so Iâve never bought a Mac.**
Soon as they went back to RISC (M1/M2 is ARM RISC 64 bit) - with UNIX on 64 bit RISC - I was in. Donât see the point in trying to run Linux on Apple Silicon, Iâm 100% happy with MacOS which is a POSIX compliant UNIX implementation.
** I have a âmuseumâ PC PowerPC (32 bit RISC âPowerâ architecture) era PowerBook (bronze keybaord "piezo) with a PowerPC G4 (or G3?) which I did try to run Linux on, but I think the optical drive is dodgy and this was before Apple widely adopted USB (they wanted people to pay extra and use Firewire only - not the first time Apple âmissed the boatâ, and wouldnât be the last either 
) - but either way - even that was UNIX (OS X âLeopardâ) - I did manage to use Linux and âddâ to clone the 6 GB HDD to a 40 GB IDE HDD.
1 Like
Frank:
I am running Ubuntu on a 2016 15.6 Macbook Pro. I tried a few distros, but this particular model has a finicky wifi chip and Ubuntu was the only distro that had a (relatively) easy solution. Computer runs like a champ. I did have to download a driver to run the wifi chip separately from the install, which means I had to get online without the aid of wifi. In my case, following a recent move and boxes galore in my garage, I opted to use my cell phone on a USB connection to my computer to download the driver (didnât know where the Ethernet cords were). I think it took about two minutes to get it up and running. Most other Macs are far easier to convert to Linux.
I think this makes sense when your computer wonât run current OS editions and has slowed to a snailâs pace. It made a dust collector at my house into a usable computer. That said, those aluminum Macbook Pros are heavy, so itâs really just a desktop work station.
1 Like