ayozone

I needed a new vmware image larger than my old 2Go vmdk. After searching a bit, I found a solution with qemu, but the guide wasn’t very clear and the vmware image creation was done with a mystical command that I didn’t want try to understand.
So I downloaded VMware workstation 6.5.1. After registering, vmware sent me an email with an activation link to obtain my evaluation license (free 30 days trial).

Once downloaded the .bundle version for my architecture (32bits), I just run this to install :

sudo bash VMware-Workstation-6.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

The install process is now completely graphical (no mystical questions like in the older versions with the script vmware-config), and requires two or three clics to agree the license and go next.
After that, I just ran vmare and start to create my new virtual machine to host my win xp pro. VMware asked me for the license just before powering on the new virtual machine.
Even the wizzard to create the virtual machine is better than before, it took my really a few time to set this up. After windows install, vmware had automagically installed vmware tools on my guest OS. I finished by setting a shared folder on the host (in menu VM > settings > options).
Then I uninstalled VMware Workstation like this :

sudo vmware-uninstall

I went again on vmware website to download VMware player (again the .bundle version), which is not open source, but is free.
I ran the installer like this :

sudo bash VMware-Player-2.5.1-126130.i386.bundle

which required again 2 or 3 clics like the workstation installer.

And, now I can enjoy my new virtual machine running win XP pro sp3.

The only issue was some keys that didn’t work well in the guest OS (a known Intrepid bug). I applied this workaround :

echo 'xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true' > ~/.vmware/config

The Alt Gr key still doesn’t work, but Ctrl + Alt does the same as Alt Gr so, this is not a big issue.