VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are now free for all users. Didn't Broadcom just release him in March 2024?
Yes, the products were changed to free models for personal use. But, the original announcement stated that the commercial version of the products would remain as a paid product. After six months, there are no such restrictions, you can use VMware Fusion and Workstation for free even in business and educational environments.
Is development of VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion being stopped?
Broadcom has also done Confirmed Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro are no longer available for purchase. The company will continue to honor existing contracts, and provide service and support until the end of the term. The big question is, have these products been discontinued?
according to a Comment By VMware employee, it appears that the engineering team is not affected by the changes (only sales of the products are). Therefore the development of products will continue. This seems like a nice surprise. Broadcom has plenty of other VMware products that bring in money.
However, it is worth noting that VMware/Broadcom's support team will not provide direct assistance to users. Instead, you'll need to discuss it in community forums and use online guides and documentation to troubleshoot issues. This may not seem like a problem for individual users, but it can be a nightmare for sysadmins who manage business endpoints and networks.
Download VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion for business, educational, or personal use
You can read about the features of VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion here desktop hypervisor Page. Check out my previous article to download VMware Workstation Pro for Windows and Linux and VMware Fusion Pro for Mac. Nothing has changed there, you'll still need to go to Broadcom's support portal, and login to your account. https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/downloads.
latest version of vmware workstation pro There is 17.6.1 for Windows and Linux, and vmware fusion pro Is 13.6.1. You can also choose to download older versions of the software if necessary.
It's strange that the download page lists VMware Workstation Pro and VMware Workstation Pro for Personal Use separately. There is no difference between the two versions, the file size and checksum are the same, and even the license agreement appears to be the same.
Business users are unhappy with VMware
are innumerable complaints There have been reports of recent VMWare price increases from business users and administrators, several of which have increased. One Comment Says their renewal price increases from 7K in 2022 to 150K in 2024 (assuming it's in US dollars). It was much expected after the acquisition by Broadcom.
Tom's Hardware Citing an article by Business Insider, it mentions that companies are comparing the price hikes to being held for ransom. some people are also like this Worried Broadcom has removed features such as the legacy VMTools ISO (can still be downloaded), Bluetooth Hub Pass Through, Physical Host Parallel Port support, Unity Mode, and Enhanced Keyboard Driver. Some administrators say they have moved to the Proxmox Virtual Environment, as it is open source, based on Debian GNU/Linux, and also supported by VEM.
VMWare is still good enough for most home users. I run a Linux Mint VM in a workstation, and also use it for testing Windows 11 builds from the preview channels. They work perfectly fine, at least for my use cases. If you want to move away from VMware, VirtualBox Still the most popular choice.
Thanks for reading..
