How to 100% Hose up a company !! Broadcomm you've done it for VmWare/Workstation

Hi folks
Welcome to a company that's even more hosed up than Ms. I've been wanting to test Vmware Workstation rel 17 - but trying to bavigate the broadcomm site you just go round in circles -- and get "not entititled" or something like that -- In any case it's a FREE product so why should I go through all that nonsense to download the thing.

I'll probably look for a Torrent -- should be OK as it's a freeware product now !!! Otherwise I'll forget it.

Cheers
jimbo

I 100% agree. First you hop through hoops and loops and after you get an actual download link, you still need to fill in all your personal data.

After all this trouble, I'm surprised that they didn't ask for my shoe size and bank account credentials.

Typical big American phishing company.

Because I know the file hashes, I ended up grabbing the actual files from a 3rd party portal and verified their integrity. It was 2 clicks per file (Win & Lnx)

You just ignore Broadcom's useless site and download from eslewhere:


Here are VMware Tools (aka drivers and utilities) for the supported guest OSes:

spapakons said:

You just ignore Broadcom's useless site and download from eslewhere:

VMware Workstation Pro 17.5.2 (Personal + Commercial) : Broadcom, VMware : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is one of the first VMware versions to be available for personal use, and can be used freely without purchasing a license key.This archive comes with both...

archive.org

Here are VMware Tools (aka drivers and utilities) for the supported guest OSes:

Install VMware Tools in VMware products

knowledge.broadcom.com

Index of tools/releases/latest/

Click to expand...

Thanks

!!!

Cheers
jimbo

SlicEnDicE said:

I 100% agree. First you hop through hoops and loops and after you get an actual download link, you still need to fill in all your personal data.

After all this trouble, I'm surprised that they didn't ask for my shoe size and bank account credentials.

Typical big American phishing company.

Click to expand...

I'm surprised they didn't ask me how many times I used the toilet per day or what I had for dinner 21 years ago !!!

I just filled in V.Putin
Address at the Kremlin moscow red square
Made sure I was on a Russian VPN first !!! after logging on to Tor - so double safety.

Then exited.

Got the file from @spapakons Internet archive link - both Linux and Windows versions.

Cheers
jimbo

I have read that the Unity mode (running a guest app in a window instead of showing the whole guest OS) is deprecated in 17.5. If you need this functionality download an earlier version such as VMWare Workstation 16, or use an alternative such as VirtualBox. In VirtualBox it's called Seamless mode.

spapakons said:

I have read that the Unity mode (running a guest app in a window instead of showing the whole guest OS) is deprecated in 17.5. If you need this functionality download an earlier version such as VMWare Workstation 16, or use an alternative such as VirtualBox. In VirtualBox it's called Seamless mode.

Click to expand...

I'm testing in Fedora Pre release V43 (Rawhide) -- Virtual Box won't load some of the kernel drivers - so I'll have to try that in the current release of Fedora V42.

I hate to say it - but currently when it DOES work VMWare workstation pro is far more intuitive - but Vbox at least is open source and can be compiled from source if required.

I still think the whicħever way you look at it - on a Linux host the KVM/QEMU virtualistaion is far superior !! but it's good to test these things and for a Windows Host if you don't want to mess around with HYPER-V either of these systems work OK.

Just don't try VBOX or VmWare workstation on kernel 6.16.x.x yet though !!!

Cheers
jimbo

I tried installing Oracle Solaris in VMware in Windows 11 to test it. I first installed the text interface and then tried to add the GUI only to find out it gets stuck without a working mouse or keyboard due to some incompatibility. I then downloaded VirtualBox and installed Oracle Solaris there. The desktop worked, but even with all the updates installed it is a rather old OS and almost nothing new works. I tried to install Open Office (old version 3.3, there is no newer) but it complained it could not find JRE 1.6 and I had no clue how to uninstall JRE 1.8 and install 1.6 Just before I smashed my monitor, I gave up, deleted the virtual machine and installed Open Indiana to test it. I had more progress there since it is a newer OS, but not without a lot of annoying incompatibilities and difficulties. At least Ubuntu is much more user friendly if anyone wants to experiment with Linux.

spapakons said:

I tried installing Oracle Solaris in VMware in Windows 11 to test it. I first installed the text interface and then tried to add the GUI only to find out it gets stuck without a working mouse or keyboard due to some incompatibility. I then downloaded VirtualBox and installed Oracle Solaris there. The desktop worked, but even with all the updates installed it is a rather old OS and almost nothing new works. I tried to install Open Office (old version 3.3, there is no newer) but it complained it could not find JRE 1.6 and I had no clue how to uninstall JRE 1.8 and install 1.6 Just before I smashed my monitor, I gave up, deleted the virtual machine and installed Open Indiana to test it. I had more progress there since it is a newer OS, but not without a lot of annoying incompatibilities and difficulties. At least Ubuntu is much more user friendly if anyone wants to experiment with Linux.

Click to expand...

Try Fedora 42 with KDE desktop --it's the most "Windows like" Linux system out there, has simple to use package manager and everything works straight OOTB. It's backed by RedHat now owned by IBM so plenty of resources to ensure the distro works -- especially for "leading edge" -- it's used to test stuff as well that will eventually find its way into their commercial enterprise servers and cloud systems.

(hint - install basic fedora, then add groups plasma and kde-desktop. This minimises any bloat with the GUI).

Then add kvm for virtualisation, virtual machine manager for the VM GUI manager add yourself to kvm libvirtd groups to run virtual machine manager as normal (non root / superuser) and then install Windows VM's !!.

Here's a newly installed W11 enterprise on KVM/QEMU - no probs with sound etc on the VM or dynamic device re-directs unlike HYPER-V when running a Linux VM .




Cheers
jimbo

Thanks. I usually install Ubuntu on a virtual machine because is popular and has many drivers and applications. I never had issues with sound. Traditionally I install the Linux VMware Tools, but last time I installed the Open VMS Tools instead since I read it is better. I haven't tried another Linux distro. I just want to see how easy is to use, there are improvements, but has a long way to go before it is as easy as Windows and this among others means everything is done in GUI and the average user never has to open the Terminal. I don't see this happening any soon. In an older virtual machine I wanted to compare the desktop environments, so I installed all the Ubuntu flavors (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu) and all the respective applications, resulting in a rather large virtual machine... Παν μέτρον άριστον (every moderate is best, meaning the extremes are not), as we say in Greek. Of course I deleted that large virtual machine to free valuable disk space.

jimbo45 said:

Try Fedora 42 with KDE desktop --it's the most "Windows like" Linux system out there, has simple to use package manager and everything works straight OOTB. It's backed by RedHat now owned by IBM so plenty of resources to ensure the distro works -- especially for "leading edge" -- it's used to test stuff as well that will eventually find its way into their commercial enterprise servers and cloud systems.

(hint - install basic fedora, then add groups plasma and kde-desktop. This minimises any bloat with the GUI).

Then add kvm for virtualisation, virtual machine manager for the VM GUI manager add yourself to kvm libvirtd groups to run virtual machine manager as normal (non root / superuser) and then install Windows VM's !!.

Here's a newly installed W11 enterprise on KVM/QEMU - no probs with sound etc on the VM or dynamic device re-directs unlike HYPER-V when running a Linux VM .

View attachment 136549


Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

Comparing oranges and bananas. Hyper-V vms of windows Pro, Enterprise, Edu have sound and usb redirects in enhanced mode.

Only problem is with Home.

While my Ubuntu virtual machine was fully updated, I had the idea to install and test KDE plasma. When I had done it in the past, I was presented with my user account and a gear icon to select KDE or the previous desktop environment. Unfortunately this time while following a guide, I changed the login display manager (login screen in lame terms) to SDDM. That gave me a crude graphics interface where I had to type my user name, rather than just click on the user icon. I had forgot what that was and I could not login! Thankfully I found instructions how to modify the boot entry in order to boot in text mode and then using the appropriate commands to see what my user was. I managed to login and then replaced SDDM with LightDM. If I am not mistaken, this was the good old login interface with the gear to select desktop environment. Best of all I could select my user rather than typing it. If any Ubuntu developer is reading that, please change the default to LightDM after installing KDE. It is MUCH easier to use. SDDM is awful! Let alone whenever I tried to type in SDDM a huge on-screen keyboard covering half of the screen hided the text box and I couldn't see what I was typing. There was no option to disable it!

Since I had selected to install the full KDE, I also had a lot of applications installed, so I didn't have to manually install them from the terminal. Much much better user experience than vanilla Ubuntu. They have come much closer to user friendliness than original Ubuntu, but no match for Windows yet. Sorry Linux fans. So if anyone wants to try Linux I recommend using the KDE desktop environment (such as install Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu), which is more similar to Windows and you will feel more at home. Of course I would first try it on a virtual machine and think twice before replacing Windows with Linux for my everyday OS. Don't forget about hardware and software compatibilities.

cereberus said:

Comparing oranges and bananas. Hyper-V vms of windows Pro, Enterprise, Edu have sound and usb redirects in enhanced mode.

Only problem is with Home.

Click to expand...

Not disagreeing at all here -- for Windows Hosts HYPER-V is really good and simple - it's just a little bit restrictive on things like dynamic re-direct and non USB disk type devices.

Cheers
jimbo

spapakons said:

While my Ubuntu virtual machine was fully updated, I had the idea to install and test KDE plasma. When I had done it in the past, I was presented with my user account and a gear icon to select KDE or the previous desktop environment. Unfortunately this time while following a guide, I changed the login display manager (login screen in lame terms) to SDDM. That gave me a crude graphics interface where I had to type my user name, rather than just click on the user icon. I had forgot what that was and I could not login! Thankfully I found instructions how to modify the boot entry in order to boot in text mode and then using the appropriate commands to see what my user was. I managed to login and then replaced SDDM with LightDM. If I am not mistaken, this was the good old login interface with the gear to select desktop environment. Best of all I could select my user rather than typing it. If any Ubuntu developer is reading that, please change the default to LightDM after installing KDE. It is MUCH easier to use. SDDM is awful!

Since I had selected to install the full KDE, I also had a lot of applications installed, so I didn't have to manually install them from the terminal. Much much better user experience than vanilla Ubuntu. They have come much closer to user friendliness than original Ubuntu, but no match for Windows yet. Sorry Linux fans. So if anyone wants to try Linux I recommend using the KDE desktop environment (such as install Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu), which is more similar to Windows and you will feel more at home. Of course I would first try it on a virtual machine and think twice before replacing Windows with Linux for my everyday OS. Don't forget about hardware and software compatibilities.

Click to expand...

You need to select the start up options to enable graphical login so you don't need tomess around with SDDM. You can also revert to "text login". Also at any time simply press alt-F3/4/5 etc to get a bog standard text login shell.

If you install the whole KDE gamut of applications you are going to get a HUGE amount of stuff probably a lot you would never use.

for graphical login at boot systemctl set-default graphical.target
for text login at boot systemctl set-default multi-user.target

Trick is to install the Fedora SERVER edition, then select basic stuff and then after logon from the server ADD the kde stuff via dnf5 group install
just choose minimal stuff.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Not disagreeing at all here -- for Windows Hosts HYPER-V is really good and simple - it's just a little bit restrictive on things like dynamic re-direct and non USB disk type devices.

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

I don't know about Hyper-V, but VMware workstation can also pass control of the serial and parallel ports to the guest OS. Very useful to connect old devices that have no drivers for Windows 10/11 but work perfectly on XP. That way I could use my father's old scanner (in a Windows XP virtual machine) and my parallel port Iomega ZIP drive. I have also managed to successfully use a physical disk to boot into an existing Windows installation (aka virtualize the computer). There is also a hack to enable Mac OS support, so I did it and installed Mac OS 12 Monterey to experiment with.