The nice people at VMware are now giving away their VMware server platform for free.

VMware Server (formerly known as GSX server) is a daemonised version of VMware running in a host operating system. It is very useful for software developers who want to test their software on multiple platforms.

I also use it to run Microsoft Windows XP on my Linux box, and it works fine. Especially the snapshot feature has saved me many a Windows reinstall.

Caveats:

  1. You will need to sign up for a VMware account (free)
  2. VMware still calls the product "beta"


I guess they are afraid of the competition that they are getting from Microsoft Virtual PC 2004, User-mode Linux and Xen.

Thanks to b3n for the pointer.