This post is part of a series about my development stack – I use an Ubuntu Server VM running on Windows.
- Part 1 showed how to set up the VM
- Part 2 demonstrated how we could share code on the host system with the guest in order to execute it in a Linux environment
There’s some sort of grim inevitably to progress with this series so far: I put together a post showing how to use VMWare Player, only for them to release a new version and render all my screenshots out-of-date. I thought it’d be worth adding some more to show some of the more obvious differences.
Taking a first look at things, the new version looks pretty familiar. It’s lost the thick blue borders and skin, and has a refreshing Aero feel.
Version 4
Version 5
Perhaps the most interesting change is the prominent new notifications about licensing. I’m not using the software commercially so it’s not a problem for me, but I was curious to see how a licence would cost. Clicking through we reach an unhelpful page offering me “VMWare Fusion for Mac OSX”. Looks like VMWare need to figure things out…
I had no problems starting Virtual Machines created under version 4 of the player (I won’t go so far as to say this was a relief, but it’s certainly helpful!) Once running a VM, the interface looks much cleaner.
One change worth noting is that accessing the virtual machine settings now takes an extra click – it’s now found under the single “Player” menu:
While exploring around I also noticed something I’d not found before – the ability to download and install a “Virtual Appliance” directly. Clicking the menu option takes us to a marketplace for VM images.
There’s an appliance for Ubuntu Server 12.04, but looking at the comments it seems they charge for this, so I’ll stick to installing it manually.