It works for both Windows Vista and prior versions (support of arp -s and netsh).

It is incredible that Microsoft invests so much money in its security and that there are still such a bad security design for programs that in no way should be granted any administrator access (calc.exe or notepad.exe).

Also, I can’t imagine that no one could detect it in their teams during the quality process and security audit.

What the hell are they doing ?

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…) !

Mark Dowd (IBM) and Alexander Sotirov (VMWare) found a way to bypass  the memory protection implemented in Vista to inject malicious instructions within Internet Explorer. They were able to copy any content wherever they wished on the disk.

Especially, this paper will be an interesting reading, even if it is not as simple as they say – at least for me.

I tried first the easy way, right clicking on it and trying to take it off line using the menu of Microsoft.

Unfortunately, that didn’t do anything, complaining that several users were accessing it. Of course, trying to restore it directly gave the same message.

I couldn’t find a way to successfully force it through the interface.

It was, of course, a multiuser database on which always an user was working on, making it impossible to overwrite it.

So, at this point, I had to consider using the SQL query tool, to enjoy the power of a command line interface (you see what I mean).

Below is the kind of request I submited :

use master;
alter database $your_database set single_user with rollback immediate;
backup database $your_database to disk = 'C:\$your_database.bak' with init,Name = 'backup';
restore database $your_database from disk = 'C:\path\to\your\DB\$your_new_database.bak' with replace,file=1,recovery
alter database Datasharing_Translation set multi_user with rollback immediate;

It switches the database to the single user mode, make a backup of it (for safety), make the restoring operation, and finally switches it back to the multi user mode.

Once again the day is saved by a command line tool !

Unfortunately, I could not attend any conference, but I had a quick and nice view of the exhibition. All the major actors were there and I had a good time talking with some people about the trends.

It was fun to see that Microsoft was there in small stand. But more fun was that there were turning around in small cars, just in front of the building of Linux Solutions.

Here are the Vista vehicules :

Beside that, it was great to learn the news that a french car makers, Peugeot, will swith 20 000 of its PC and 2500 of its server to the Novell Linux solution.

It seems that times are changing… and I am sure that shiny marketing won’t change anything !