VMWare - Run Virtual Computers Inside Your PC

VMWare is a fantastic utility, available in various incarnations for Mac, Windows and Linux, that allows a computer user to create a virtual computer on one of his/her hard drives.

What's the advantage of this? Well, for me, it's saved me a ton of blank CDs. While I love Ubuntu Linux, I find myself almost continuously downloading and installing other varieties of Linux. I've tried OpenSUSE, Fedora, Mint, Debian, Sabayon, Mandriva, MEPIS... practically anything that's been in the top ten of the Distrowatch Top 100 list has, at one time or another, been installed on my computer.

Now, the time and effort isn't too much to do this. I typically keep all my documents on an external hard drive, so when I install a new operating system, I'm not losing too much. And the cost of blank CDs isn't exactly prohibitive these days (not when you can occasionally pick up a 50-pack for around five dollars!), but still... wouldn't it be nice if I could try out a new operating system without having to burn any discs, and do it in such a way that I didn't write over my current operating system?

Thanks to VMWare, I can!

I recently installed the free version of VMWare (you can download it straight from the partner repositories if you use Ubuntu, otherwise it can be downloaded from the VMWare home page), and I think it just may have changed the way I "audition" new operating systems forever!

So, what exactly is VMWare? Well, in a nutshell it's a piece of software that provides a virtual set of hardware on which to run an operating system. In this way, a CD image of a version of Linux, for example, can be downloaded, and a virtual machine created. This Linux can then be installed, virtually, on this machine, and run from within the VMWare application. Aspects of the computer, such as the video adapter, network adapter, sound card and hard disks are created virtually, while some hardware, such as USB and Firewire drivers, are passed to the virtual machine from the physical host.