VMWare has made Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free for personal use, allowing home users and students to set up their own virtualized test labs and play with another operating system at little to no cost.
Things have been a little shaky since Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in November for $61 billion, with the company announcing the divestiture of its End-User Computing Division, the end of perpetual licensing, and discontinuation of the free vSphere Hypervisor offering.
We have some good news for a change, with VMware announcing yesterday that VMware Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro are now free for personal use.
After registering a VMware account and installing Workstation Pro or Fusion, you will be greeted with a screen asking if you use the product for personal use or in a commercial setting.
You must enter a purchased license key if you use it in a business.
For personal users, you can simply select that option, and it will install with all its standard features with no limitations.
With their full-featured products now free, VMware says they are discontinuing Workstation Player and Fusion Player, and they are no longer available for purchase.
As the VMs used in Player are compatible with their Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro counterparts, there should be no issues upgrading to the full-featured versions.
For those using VMware Player products, the company has provided instructions on upgrading to the Pro versions.
Current Product Going Forward Workstation Player Download and install the Workstation Pro personal use product.
Workstation Player will continue to be bundled with Workstation Pro just as it is today.
Fusion Player Update to Fusion 13.5.2 and delete your license key file.
Products will continue to be supported for existing customers in alignment with their existing End of Life and End of General Support dates.
Recommended upgrade to Pro products going forward for continued support and product enhancements.
Roy says these changes are being made to simplify how the company offers its desktop hypervisor products.
VMware fixes three zero-day bugs exploited at Pwn2Own 2024.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Tue, 14 May 2024 19:35:05 +0000