The first surprising thing was the file I downloaded. It is now not anymore a tar.gz archive but a .bundle file.

After downloading, as root, just make it executable or start it with sh :

% sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle

It now starts a graphic installer, that takes care of everything. All the compilation process is now hidden to the user.

I was expecting the compilation to fail and that I would have to look for a patch to run on my edge Linux kernel. Indeed, I just compiled 2.6.26 kernel (64 bits) a few days ago.

But nothing like that. the process went smoothly.

However, I was still prudent. Even after a compiling, previous versions almost always required some patch to get full networking to work.

So I gave a try and launch one of my virtual machines. Surprise : all worked out of the box !

For the first time, I even did not need any vmware-any-any patch or any network patched vmmon and vmnet modules to get wifi networking operational.

I also quickly noticed some very nice and fancy features :

• 3D graphics support
• more devices supported : fingerprint reader device, audio driver for Vista, …
• a graphical virtual network settings editor : this utility had been for ages on the Windows version and finally will make your easier on Linux

At last, but not least, the Unity display mode.

Though I am not a Mac user, I believe this can be compared to VMWare Fusion. Anyway, it allows you to display the virtual machines programs within your X session.

Look at this screenshot :

The result is quite spectacular. On my Gnome desktop, I am now able to display some windows from Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Well, this is not yet perfectly smooth or artifact free, but this is already really usable and responsive enough to be used intensively.

Another limit is the operating system support. So far, among my virtual machines, I was able to do it with Windows systems but not Open Solaris for instance.

There must have been more improvements, more or less visible, that I am not aware of. I won’t go for a full review.

I just wanted to insist that if you are a VMWare user,  you really should consider to upgrade for the complete support of the latest kernel and the Unity feature.

It seems that VMWare has listened to the Linux users, or at least is taking it more seriously. Not that they are nice, but the competitors are close (Virtual box, KVM, Xen…) !

This blog made me think twice. I think I am going to check KVM first.

There is an issue concerning the ACPI, which makes the guest machine so slow that it is barely usable.

If you do on your terminal :

$ cat /sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate

You will probably get a value bigger than 1. In my case, it was 8 (default in Ubuntu, I guess). This value is related to the number of level that the processor takes to save energy (reducing its performance and power consumption when idle).

For a try, fix it to a smaller value and check how VMWare is going :

$ sudo -s
$ echo 3 > /sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate

I think 3 is a good compromise. At least it is working very well on my machine, no slow down at all. If you still have the issue, reduce it to 2 or even 1. The side effect is that your laptop will be a little bit more power hungry, but so little that you probably won’t see any difference.

If you stop here, you will loose the change at the next startup. To have it set on boot, edit the /etc/init.d/acpid file.

Add the line at the end of the function named load_modules() :

echo 3 > /sys/module/processor/parameters/max_cstate

I found out the solution thanks to this article. Go there for more info or alternative solutions (including for different systems).

I hope this will be helpful.