I have recently been working with VMware Workstation

on a

Linux platform to look at virtual machine (VM) performance. I have

loaded Microsoft and Linux virtual machines and I am getting good

performance.

If you are interested in loading VMware Workstation 5.5 on a Linux box, follow these

instructions for a simple installation. For this lab, we will use Red Hat


Enterprise Linux.

Note: You can follow along by using the links to see the appropriate images or view the gallery as a whole.

Let’s start by downloading the installation files to the

/tmp directory. You have the option of

downloading the compressed Tar Archive or the RPM version of VMware

Workstation 5.5.

We

will use the compressed tar archive version to install Workstation 5.5.

Since there are many different distributions of Linux, I always feel

safe installing the product using the compressed tar archive.

We will continue by opening a terminal window and unpacking the archive. You need to be logged in as su in order to perform this installation.

Next, point to the /tmp directory and type the

following command to unpack the archive.

Now let’s

point to the vmware-distrib


directory and run the installation program (vmware-install.pl). At this point,

you will be asked a series of questions

and the defaults are provided for you (see gallery).

Once the installation is complete, you can run Workstation


5.5 by typing the following command: /usr/bin/vmware.