Question about VMware

[Darren43]

is VMware technically an Operating System? Should it be installed before Win 7 or Ubuntu?

 

[Steltek]

Which VMware product are you referring to? If you mean VMware Workstation or Player, then you have to install them in a host operating system (which means you install the host OS, then VMware).

 

[JackMDS]

Regular VMware server or play station are Not an OS, they are applications that Run on top of Win7 (there are versions for other OS' too).

It interfaces with Hardware of the Host OS (Win 7 in your case) to provide an emulation that allows software installation of Guest OS' into the Virtual Machine (VMware).

I.e., if you have Win7 computer, its installed as any application onto Win 7. Then you can install other Win OS', or, Linux,OS', or even Apple OS on the Virtual Machine.

Since it does everything in software the Guest (the added OS through VMware) is usually slower than if it was running on its own computer. As an example, a Mac emulation will run slower than it would run on a real Mac.

The guest is using the main memory of the computer so you need "Big" memory (like 8GB and above) on the Host computer to accommodate both the Host and the Guest.

You have to take into consideration that the Hardware of the guest is standard emulation of the Virtual Machine as designed by developer. I.e., if you have a very powerful Video the Guest Video will Not run on the Power Video card as is, it will run slower on the much less powerful emulated Video Card.

Some hardware components might No be emulated at all. I.e., even if they exist on the Host computer they will not be seen by the Guest.

If you want to experience it first, you can download the free Win 7 Virtual PC + the free Windows XP SP3 and give it a try.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx