Changes

In the world of VMware Server 2.0 there are both ''supported '' and ''unsupported '' guest operating systems. it It is important to understand, however, that just because an opearing operating systems is not officially supported to run within a VMware Server virtual machine does not necessarily mean it will not actually work in this environment. It simply means that VMware, Inc. has not actually validated that it will work. In fact, the majority of operating systems missing from the officially supported list will actually run without any problems in VMware Server(including older versions of Windows such as Windows 98).

If the required guest operating system is not officially supported it is still worth trying to run it inside a VMware Server virtual machine. After all, when virtual machine machines can be created in minutes (and deleted in secondsif a test fails), there is little to lose in experimentinga little guest operating system experimentation.

There are many Linux distributions and versions freely available today, and as such it would be impossible for VMware to validate every single one. It is important to note, however, that even if a specific Linux guest operating system is not listedas being officially supported, it does not necessarily mean it will not run within VMware Server 2.0. In fact, it is usually sufficient to select the closest match from the list. In the case of unsupported Linux distributions, identify the kernel version (current mainstream versions are 2.4 and 2.6) and whether the operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit, and then make an appropriate selection from the ''Other Linux'' options. In most cases, the Linux distribution will run perfectly (or at least no less perfectly than a supported distribution) within the VMware Server virtual machine.

With the aboveinformation above information in mind, the following tables list the current officially supported VMware Server 2.0 guest operating systems: