[clug] VMware Workstation for Linux

[George at Clug]

    I am on a journey to use Linux for my primary desktop. Below I
describe a summary of my experiences in searching for a personal
Hypervisor that runs under Linux.

For some time I have used VMware Workstation in Microsoft Windows to
virtualise various Desktops, Servers, and Hypervisors for testing,
learning and demonstration purposes.  With my change over to using
Linux, I have been using KVM with Virt-Manager for this purpose,
however I have been unable to host VMware ESXi or Microsoft Hyper-V as
Guest VM, or to create a Linux Guest VM supporting the Cinnamon
Desktop Environment with 3D Video graphics support (so that the Guest
does not fall back to software rendering).  

Workstation 12 Pro now supports DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 delivering a
more fluid and responsive experience when running 3D applications. -
See more at:
http://www.vmware.com/au/products/workstation/features#sthash.NiaiEmbX.dpuf
On a test Debian Xfce Nvidia GF 610 Desktop I have been able to all of
the above using VMware Workstation 12 for Linux, but I had issues
supporting 3D graphics on my Laptop as it has an Nvidia Optumis video
card (a hybrid of both Intel and Nvidia GPUs) .

I have searched for solutions to get Nvidia 3D graphics working on my
laptop but all I find is that this cannot be achieved (e.g. due to
being muxless?). While I may be wrong about this, I still was not able
to find a way to get the Nvidia 3D GPU to be used.  

I had believed my inability to create a Debian Cinnamon Guest that did
not use software rendering in VMware Workstation on my laptop (under a
Debian Xfce host environment), was due to not being able to tap into
the 3D Graphics support of the Nvidia Optimus GPU. Well I was wrong
(this some times happens).  During my research for an solution to
enabling Nvidia Optimus 3D on my laptop, I  found the comment below
which suggested that VMware Workstation may require a parameter to be
set in its config file.  My installation was missing this setting and
after adding it, my Laptop can now host Cinnamon Guests good enough to
run Minecraft (not good enough to effectively play Minecraft, but
enough to prove that 3D graphics required to support Minecraft is
working, and certainly just as effective as in a Windows based host).

http://askubuntu.com/questions/537787/enable-3d-hw-acceleration-on-vmware-workstation-10-on-ubuntu-14-04
_Edit the file ~/.vmware/preferences and look for a line that starts
with mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers, if it is not present - you can
add it into the file._


The below indicates the features that I like with VMware Workstation; 
Workstation 12 Pro now supports DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 delivering a
more fluid and responsive experience when running 3D applications. -
See more at:
http://www.vmware.com/au/products/workstation/features#sthash.NiaiEmbX.dpuf
http://www.vmware.com/au/products/workstation/features
Workstation 12 Pro now supports DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 delivering a
more fluid and responsive experience when running 3D applications.

For organizations and technical users that run the latest Linux
distributions, Workstation 12 Pro supports Ubuntu 15.04, Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7.1, Fedora 22, and many more. 
You can even create nested hypervisors to run Hyper-V or VMware ESXi
and vSphere to build up the ultimate vSphere lab for training, show
demos, and testing. 
Workstation 12 Pro has added support for VMware Photon so you can
start building and experimenting with containerized application
running in a virtualized environment. 

I wonder who will be the first to tell me that I should be using
Virtual Box.  Maybe I should?  Can Virtual Box host a VMware ESXi
Guest ?

My journey can still encounter many interesting issues. From a quick
glance VMware Workstation/Player does add some intriguing Networking
configuration which I am yet to understand (and can conflict with my
Network Bridges that I set up for KVM.

If you find any of the above of interest, or have information that you
believe could be of use to me, please do reply.  I hope the
information about  mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers="TRUE"  will be of
use to at least someone out there.

If you use desktop virtulisation, what OS do you use for this, and
what personal hypervisor do you use?


George.