I've been playing around with this for a couple of weeks now and it's great. If you haven't seen the VMware Player, you should give it a look. It's free and it's pretty nifty. The Browser Appliance, a virtual machine running Ubuntu and Firefox, is pretty neat too.
Posted by: nick | December 12, 2005 12:59 PM
nick: What, this link doesn't work? http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmplayer/Browser-Appliance-1.0.0.zip
Posted by: Jon | December 12, 2005 2:07 PM
What's the point of the browser appliance? I can run easily a LiveCD, which includes much more programs than the browser appliance itself (which is a scaled down version of Ubuntu 5.10. Nice idea, although I don't think it's anywhere easier/faster to use than a LiveCD.
Nicola
Posted by: Nicola | December 12, 2005 2:20 PM
I am still waiting for the BA to download, but I assume that it is way faster to startup than an Ubuntu liveCD.
Posted by: Matt Sayler | December 12, 2005 3:14 PM
@ Nicola: The "browser appliance" is just a little something to test the vmware player. The vmware player itself is brand new, and needs something to show off its capablities. We will see more fully-featured virtual machines in the future.
A Mozilla fans, we should be glad they picked Firefox as the application to showcase in the "browser appliance". We get so much positive publicity that way.
Posted by: ADAXL | December 12, 2005 10:37 PM
Thanks for the tip. I've downloaded the ubuntu image since it contains firefox as well as the rest of whatever is in the image. However, I have immediately hit a snag. It is preconfigured and has a root password that I can't figure out. There is a pdf for the browser vm that says the default password is "vmware", but that doesn't work for the ubuntu image. Any guesses?
Posted by: Jim Battle | December 13, 2005 12:19 AM
OK, figured it out. although the browser appliance has a password of vmware, the ubuntu image logs you in as user=ubuntu, password=ubuntu. to set up a root password, type
~$ sudo passwd
(current UNIX password): ubuntu
Enter new UNIX password: foo
Retype new UNIX password: foo
Of course the password keystrokes aren't echoed to the screen and you probably want a password stronger than foo.
Posted by: Jim Battle | December 13, 2005 1:00 AM
ADAXL: I agree with you. However, look at the big picture. As a Mozilla fan, I am more than glad to see that major Linux distros are using Firefox as "the" browser, often preferring it to theirs own. The fact that the browser appliance uses FF is the cherry in the cake. Now if OEM manufacturers were to start installing FF by default in windows boxes....
Speed-wise, the browser appliance is not any faster than the Live CD.
Posted by: Nicola | December 13, 2005 9:06 AM
Jim B.:
The VMware "Browser Appliance virtual machine" is different than the one built by Canonical/Ubuntu Linux, although both currently run Ubuntu Linux 5.10 as their base Guest OS environment.
FAQ for the Browser Appliance environment:
http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=28127
The thread-leader also has information on how to request addtional FAQ topics. Although I'm the one who built the Browser Appliance, the FAQ is done on my own time (weekends and late evenings) so it might take me a lil' while to post new items.
Posted by: JMills | January 6, 2006 9:22 PM
Well it would be cool if The Browser Appliance is available for downoad... But player is very nice option! Very nice indeed...
Hope they enable dl soon!!