VMware Server has been free for a while. Go to the VMware website, download it, and install it on your Ubuntu.

Follow these instructions to install it on your x86 PC.

1. Download the VMware Server from here.

2. Download the latest patch from here.

3. Update everything to ensure that the installation goes smoothly:
a) sudo apt-get update
b) sudo apt-get upgrade
c) sudo apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xlibs-dev xinetd wget
d) apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential
e) sudo apt-get install gcc binutils-doc cpp-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb gcc-doc

4. Now decompress the VMware and patch files:
a) tar xvzf VMware-server-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz
b) tar xvzf vmware-any-any-update113.tar.gz

5. Start the directory that has just been set up: cd vmware-server-distrib)
and run the installation: sudo ./vmware-install.pl


6. When you come to the section that tells you that if you continue with the installation of the selected file you will get an error, go to the folder where the patch is located and run:
cd ..
cd vmware-any-any-update113
sudo ./runme.pl

7. The installation should proceed without any problems. You will need to confirm some actions and enter the registry key, which is obtained by completing a form from this site (free).

The Art of Virtualization on Linux

VMware is a software virtualization system. A software virtual system is a program that simulates a physical system (e.g. a computer, hardware) with certain hardware features. When you run the program (simulator), you get an executing environment with similar purposes and capabilities of a physical computer (except for the pure physical access to simulated hardware), with a CPU (may be more than one), BIOS, graphics card, RAM, network card, sound system, USB, hard disk (may be more than one), etc.

Virtualization software lets you run (simulate) multiple computers (operating systems) simultaneously with the same hardware, thus allowing for greater use of resources. However, since there is an intermediate layer between the physical system and the operating system that runs on emulated hardware, the performance speed of the later is lower. In most cases, it is sufficient for use in production environments.

VMware is similar to its counterpart Virtual PC, although there are differences between the two that affect the way the software interacts with the physical system. The performance of a virtual system varies depending on the physical characteristics of the system on which you run it, and on the virtual resources (e.g. CPU, RAM) of the system.

While most VMware instructions are executed directly on the physical hardware, with Virtual PC they are translated into calls to the operating system that runs on the physical system, emulating an x86 platform.

Thank you Bazez for inspiring this article.