FreeBSD on Virtual PC/VMware

I have very limited resources at home to test new stuff (However I am planning to make a well equipped home lab like the one scott morris has soon). But I make good use of virtual machines on my Windows XP workstation.

I use Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 (which is now free) at home because it is very light-weight and runs FreeBSD 7 very well. But at work I get the most out of VMWare Server ( free, too! ). VMWare is much bulkier and heavier, but gives you fine control over virtual machines. And officially supports FreeBSD and Solaris (my favorite ones) and has vmware-tools package for Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Netware. However vmware-tools does not work on my fbsd7 installation (dumps core), but I don’t care because I don’t run X and use if_le driver and do fine tuning manually.

If you have limited resources, I strongly suggest Microsoft Virtual PC. Though it does not officially support non-microsoft operating systems, I have several FreeBSD installation on it without any problem. Excellent for trying out system for a limited time. But if you are planning to make serious use of your virtual FreeBSD, VMware would be your only choice as it officially supports FreeBSD (even runs 64-bit edition, but I never tried that) and runs X very well.

If you are thinking of running FreeBSD on VMWare, Ivan Voras‘ article has some very useful that would make life much easier.