Review: VMware 5.0

With last month's release of VMware Workstation 5, the virtual machine software is better than ever. VMware Workstation now has 64-bit host support, the ability to capture multiple snapshots for each virtual machine, easier sharing of virtual machines, and the ability to connect multiple virtual machines in a "team" setting. Perhaps most importantly, GNU/Linux support is improved in version 5.

VMware is a framework that allows multiple operating systems to install and run inside of another one. There are a variety of different VMware products and tools designed for specialized uses, but the Workstation product is the core technology. VMware Workstation supports Windows and GNU/Linux host operating systems, and a somewhat larger number of guest OSes. You must choose which host version you want, and if you want both, you have to pay two license fees. There is some loss in performance in comparison to a native operating system installation, and users must dedicate resources to each OS instance while it is running. Extensive use of VMware can cause your hard drive's free space to quickly diminish, as you need to create and assign a virtual partition for each guest OS.

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