VMWare is some pretty awesome software. Basically, it allows you to create virtual machines that run your OS of choice inside another OS. For instance, on a Windows XP machine I run a VMWare virtual instance of K/Ubuntu, allowing me to basically have two operating systems running at the same time on the same machine. Very cool, eh?
Now VMWare has released for free the VMware Player, which allows you to run OS images that others have created. Want to try out Linux on your (fairly powerful) Windows machine? Download the free VMWare Player, then download a pre-created image of Linux. Bam!
You've got a huge choice of community OS images, including Debian, Fedora Core, FreeBSD, SUSE, K/Ubuntu, and even Minix! Guys, this one is an excellent opportunity, so definitely check this one out. Just be aware that you need a fairly decent host machine. I've got an AMD 64 3800 with 1.5 GB of RAM running Windows XP, and VMWare runs just peachy (it better!). The slower the machine, the smaller the RAM, the worse VMWare will perform. But what the hell ... try it out. It's free!
