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VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

blogs.vmware.com

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Re: VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

#72

Post by accrual »

znpy wrote: post #59
Thaxll wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual box was never good, it always felt half baked.

Years ago (pre-oracle) it was enough though: i have fond memories of using it with vagrant and be heppy.

Yes, when it was Sun VirtualBox I remember it was a favorite for testing out other operating systems for free with a simple UI. It wasn't the most powerful or flexible, but it's what was recommended if you wanted to (for example) try Ubuntu on your Windows host without dual boot or using another disk, etc.

Re: VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

#73

Post by qzx_pierri »

dist-epoch wrote: post #32

On Windows (Pro) Hyper-V is free, and quite good. Maybe it's less user friendly. Windows also has Sandbox (based on container technology), which replaces creating a VM to test some software without affecting the system.

yeah Windows Sandbox is pretty great. I use it to test sketchy software when sailing the high seas. And the option to add shared readonly folders on the host OS is nice too.

Re: VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

#74

Post by accrual »

ganoushoreilly wrote: post #2

I've mixed feelings on this. One side I love it's free, the annual pricing seems reasonable to what it was. On the other, i've been so burned by their pricing for everything else with clients that i'm reticent to be thankful. I suppose it's a step in the right direction, bringing back ESXI for homelab users would be a good step too.

> bringing back ESXI for homelab users would be a good step too.

I agree and frankly I think it was smart VMWare had a a free tier for homelab users. It produces new users who can now more easily enter the workforce with ESXi experience they might not otherwise have.

By locking it down and jacking up prices they'll squeeze out more money now, but eventually the market will shift to whatever everyone has the most experience with, which might end up being Proxmox.

Re: VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

#76

Post by TowerTall »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #73
dist-epoch wrote: post #32

On Windows (Pro) Hyper-V is free, and quite good. Maybe it's less user friendly. Windows also has Sandbox (based on container technology), which replaces creating a VM to test some software without affecting the system.

yeah Windows Sandbox is pretty great. I use it to test sketchy software when sailing the high seas. And the option to add shared readonly folders on the host OS is nice too.

How do you test sketchy software when Windows Defender is disabled in Windows Sandbox?

Re: VMware Fusion Pro: Now available free for personal use

#78

Post by eduction »

bombcar wrote: post #13
mickelsen wrote: post #3

Given that this is owned Broadcom now, and they are going all in with squeezing every last drop from ESXi and similar offerings, I wonder what's gonna happen with Fusion in the future; while now you only pay for commercial usage, maybe they are going to let it rot over the years until it's no longer cutting edge software? Would they keep it as a loss-leader?

Fusion became basically worthless when you couldn't easily run Intel Windows on a Mac anymore because the underlying processor changed.

Worthless for some use cases but there are reasons to run Mac-on-Mac vms, including testing, development, and security (isolation). The first two also apply to some folks (maybe not many) for Linux VMs.
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