VMWare Player on Wheezy

It doesn’t really matter why; you might have any number of reasons for needing to run Windows software on your Linux box. Sometimes WINE is enough. It works pretty good for things like Notepad++ and it’s not too bad if you like MS Office 97. Too often what you need to run requires Windows itself, and that means running a virtual machine (VM) on your Linux box.

For most things I find Win2K adequate; it demands less from your system as a VM. However, the procedure is pretty much the same for WinXP. I’ve not tried it with anything more recent from Microsoft because my system isn’t all that powerful. I have a Dell Optiplex 780 made for Win7, running a dual core Intel 2.93Ghz CPU and 4GB RAM. The OS is Debian Wheezy 64-bit with XFCE.

The instructions on VMWare’s site are hard to find and incomplete. You can scavenge various forums and blogs and usually get some good advice, but much of it is out of date, including the official Debian wiki articles. VMWare offers a 64-bit version for their current free engine (6.0.0). On Debian, you’ll need at least the packages “build-essential” and the kernel headers (“linux-headers-`uname -r`” is what you type for apt-get or aptitude to identify yours). There may be some other stuff needed, but I’m not working from a fresh install of Debian. For example, I’ve already installed all the stuff necessary to build Firefox.

Find out where you downloaded the VMWare file and prepare to obtain administrative credentials, either via sudo or by logging in as root. The file name is something like VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle or it may have gotten changed to something with a different extension. Change the extension to bundle and change the permissions on the file to make it executable — i.e., chmod a+x VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle on the console. Then execute (on the console, ./VMware-Player-6.0.0-1295980.x86_64.bundle). It should open up a window and walk you through the various requirements. You don’t need a code, which means it will become the free non-commercial use version.

Once installed, use the software from your normal user account. It should appear in the menu somewhere, typically under “System.” Once the window opens and things settle down, you should have the option to create a new VM. Drop your Windows CD (or mount the ISO as a virtual CD) into the drive and wait for your system to recognize it. Then click to create a new VM. It should recognize the mounted CD as the proper source and give you a chance to proceed. I typically choose to double the size from the default virtual hard drive to ensure I have room for all the software I need to install.

I highly recommend you run the full installation without the toolkit. You’ll get the most primitive VGA window, but downloading the toolkit too soon will stall the installation of Windows. Many folks report that happens anyway. In the window menus you should find a “send Ctrl+Alt+Del” but that may not work, either. Just tell the VM to reboot and it should recover and proceed from where it froze up. Once the thing is up and running, then install the toolkit. As soon as possible in all of this process, I disable the ethernet connection for Win2K.

For Win2K you’ll need SP4 and the final roll-up from Microsoft, otherwise the toolkit won’t install. What happens is the toolkit downloads automatically, then is mounted as a virtual CD in to your virtual Windows computer. Simply double click the icon for that virtual CD and it should begin installing. Once done, you’ll have the option to use your system video capabilities. Also, you won’t have to hit Ctrl+Alt to release the mouse from the VM; it will simply transition in and out automatically. You can revisit the virtual machine settings. I usually give it both CPU cores, but most of the defaults work otherwise. One handy item is setting up a shared folder for work on your host machine. I have a folder in my $HOME called “Projects” that I label the same for the VM. Then I place an icon on the Win2K desktop for easy access.

For WinXP, you can typically allow it to connect to the Net long enough to run all the updates from Microsoft. You will need to run the usual AV, anti-malware, etc., to protect it or disable the ethernet.

Now it’s ready to install software. On my machine, the only thing that taxes the system at all is DOS software running on a Windows VM. Apparently stepping down from a hosted 64-bit to 32-bit is easy, but dropping farther to 16-bit is pretty resource intensive. Your mileage may vary.

The preferred shutdown method is to suspend Windows through its own menu. Often when you go back, VMWare Player will forget what it was doing last time and lose your VM from the list. You’ll find it under $HOME/vmware and keep double clicking until it starts the thing up. You’ll get bogus warnings about missing hardware drivers but justs give it time to load them and things should be back where you were before, at least in terms of window size, if not placement.

Connecting a USB drive or other removable file system in your VM usually disconnects it from Linux. You’ll need to learn how to navigate the menu system for VMWare Player itself and get used to where they place those things.

Enjoy.