[Xastir] Time to discard VMware as an option?

[Tom Russo]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 07:57:25AM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <davidf4 at mindspring.com> flavor, containing:
> The other day I decided to go ahead and get the latest version of VMware 
> Player to stop the "there's a new version do you want to get it?" prompt.
> 
> Well, you now have to create a userid/password on their site in order to 
> download the latest version and, while it has several improvements over 
> their last version, it also won't install on older non-PAE cpus (so my 
> Dell D600 Centrino is locked out).
> 
> I think that VMware has become aware of the popularity and is on the way 
> towards shutting down access to the player.  I also don't like the fact 
> that older machines that have the horsepower and memory are now locked out.

Feh.  

> So, is it time to dump them and go to some other VM system?

There's always Sun VirtualBox.  The Open Source Edition is somewhat crippled
(e.g. no USB support in the OSE) but so far as I have seen it's a solid 
virtualization option, and the OSE has most of the capability to create
virtual machines.

It can also run VMs made for VMWare to some extent, because it supports the
vmdk disk format.  Windows VMs are a problem and need special treatment 
moving from vmware to virtualbox, but I think linux might be less of one.
I might try this weekend to see if the Xastir-Hardy vm runs in virtualbox
unmodified.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation