Broadcom makes VMware Fusion and Workstation free for all users

VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion are actually free for all customers. Did not Broadcom make them free already in March 2024?

Sure, the merchandise had been transitioned to a free for private use mannequin. However, the unique announcement acknowledged that the industrial model of the merchandise would stay as a paid product. Six months later, there aren’t any such restrictions, you should use VMware Fusion and Workstation totally free even in industrial and academic environments.

Is the event of VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion being halted?

Broadcom has additionally confirmed that Workstation Professional and Fusion Professional are now not obtainable for buy. The corporate will proceed to honor present contracts, and supply service and help till the tip of the time period. The large query is, are the merchandise discontinued?

In line with a remark by a VMware worker, it seems that the engineering staff just isn’t affected by the modifications (solely the gross sales of the merchandise are). So the event of the merchandise will proceed. That does seem to be a pleasant shock. Broadcom does have loads of different VMware merchandise which brings in cash.

Nonetheless, one level to notice is that VMware/Broadcom’s help staff won’t supply help on to customers. As an alternative, you will want to debate it on neighborhood boards, and use on-line guides and documentation to troubleshoot points. This will likely not seem to be an issue for private customers, however it may very well be a nightmare for sysadmins who handle enterprise endpoints and networks.

Obtain VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion for industrial, instructional or private use

You may learn concerning the options of VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion on the Desktop Hypervisor web page. Discuss with my earlier article to obtain VMware Workstation Professional for Home windows and Linux, and VMware Fusion Professional for Mac. Nothing has modified there, you’ll nonetheless want to move over to Broadcom’s help portal, and login to your account. https://help.broadcom.com/group/ecx/downloads.

The newest model of VMware Workstation Professional for Home windows and Linux is 17.6.1, and VMware Fusion Professional is 13.6.1. You can too select to obtain older variations of the software program if required.

It’s quite odd that the obtain web page lists VMware Workstation Professional and VMware Workstation Professional for private use individually. There aren’t any variations between the 2 variations, the file sizes, and the checksums are the identical, and even the license settlement seems to be an identical.

Enterprise customers are sad with VMware

There are quite a few complaints from enterprise customers and admins concerning the current VMWare value hikes, of which there have been a number of. One remark says that their renewal value went from 7K in 2022 (assuming it’s in US {dollars}), to 150K in 2024. That’s fairly an insane soar. This was just about anticipated after the acquisition by Broadcom.

Tom’s {Hardware} quotes an article from Enterprise Insider, which mentions that corporations are evaluating the value hikes akin to being held by ransom. Some persons are additionally upset that Broadcom has eliminated options like legacy VMTools ISOs (can nonetheless be downloaded), Bluetooth hub move via, Bodily host parallel ports help, Unity mode, and Enhanced Keyboard driver. Some admins say they’ve migrated to Proxmox Digital Atmosphere, since it’s an open supply, based mostly on Debian GNU/Linux, and can be supported by Veeam.

VMWare remains to be fairly good for many house customers. I run a Linux Mint VM in Workstation, and likewise use it for testing Home windows 11 builds from the preview channels. They work completely tremendous, at the least for my use circumstances. If you wish to transfer away from VMware, VirtualBox remains to be the most well-liked various.

Abstract