VMware Fusion & Workstation Pro Now Free for Personal Use

FREE£0.01

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jonboy5000

Joined in 2008

165

About this deal

Admittedly not for everyone this but a great deal non the less. For anyone interested in running VMs you can now use VMware Fusion (Mac) or Workstation Pro (Windows or Linux) for free for personal use.

More details from

Edited by a community support team member, 10 hours ago

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40 Comments

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11 h, 0 m ago
Too late. virtualbox.org/ is where its at
7 h, 16 m ago
Doesn’t support apple silicon
8 h, 39 m ago
For the time being. I wouldn't trust Broadcom to not start charging for this some time down the road.
1 h, 49 m ago
Out of interest, what do people use this for, for personal use?
1 h, 25 m ago
Learning and playing with other operating systems and networking. It allows you to create entire networks full of computers that you can mess with, inside a single physical PC.

And you can try things without consequences, as you can just roll it back if you break something.

Or running old software that is a ballache to get running on modern systems for whatever reason. I used Hyper-V (the Microsoft alternative, sorta) recently to virtualise an XP machine that was running niche hobbist software. It let a guy use his old software, but on a new laptop that had no support for XP.

Also it can be useful for security, as with proper setup, a virtual machine can be effectively isolated from the rest of your home network. If you don't want to do your online banking from the same machine you browse 4Chan from, virtual machines can be useful.
8 h, 8 m ago
Horrible UX on the broadcom portal which you can't avoid. Impossible to find anything(can't even find Fusion 17 download link) and keeps opening new browser windows. I think they are still in the 90s. I wonder what the enterprise customers feel about this massive downgrade in UX
3 h, 26 m ago
I wonder what the enterprise customers feel about this massive downgrade in UX

The Broadcom website isn't the worst, not by a long shot, and bulk volume license would be done via rep anyway with vmware.

For updates, just grab them directly from the update servers.
softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds…op/

You can jump into softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds…re/ for example to grab the latest Workstation installer.
7 h, 16 m ago
Proxmox is a good alternative. Broadcom is too busy cannibalising and destroying vmware.
3 h, 22 m ago
Download link below:
softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds…71/

Select Linux or Windows
Then Core
Then download the .tar file.

Use something like 7zip to extract the installer
Once installed select Personal use on the license screen
2 h, 37 m ago
this is the way
7 h, 57 m ago
VMWare is dead, don’t waste your time. Plenty of free options available, I use UTM for Mac.
5 h, 16 m ago
does that support apple silicon?

Edit: Eventually done my own research and for anyone intersted YES it supports M series Processors however does not support 3D gaming, parallels is your best bet for that however that requires hefty sub fee.. (edited)
7 h, 38 m ago
tried to download it... went through a whole awkward process on their website. finally got to the download button after creating an account, clicking on various links, verifying myself further, etc... aaaaand the download just froze. waste of time.
8 h, 17 m ago
Impossible to download Fusion in latest free version :/ (edited)
Author
3 h, 3 m ago
You can download it here: softwareupdate.vmware.com/cds…tar
4 h, 45 m ago
What’s the likelihood they’ve made this ‘free’ because internally they’ve decided to stop all further development/support from now on?

Broadcom best avoided in this space, VMware will probably slowly die off now as BC strip it of all that was once good. They’ll feed off the enterprise customers stuck with it in big contracts until said contracts end and those customers find alternatives.

…Or more likely not; big enterprise customers will keep paying enormous fees with ever shrinking vendor support as Broadcom cut back. But it’s the easy option and they can just charge their customers right? (edited)
4 h, 35 m ago
What’s the likelihood they’ve made this ‘free’ because internally they’ve decided to stop all further development/support from now on?
I was talking to a few VMware employees recently and they did suggest this is likely to happen. They're going to replace it with a new product, likely subscription based (edited)
5 h, 17 m ago
Hasn't this always been free for personal use? I've had it on my MAC for at least 12 months.

edit: just realised I've been using 'Player' rather than 'Workstation Pro' and 'Player' is now discontinued. (edited)
3 h, 46 m ago
[deleted]
3 h, 29 m ago
What would someone use this for? What does it allow you to do with it?
6 h, 9 m ago
has anyone used Parallels and this to compare?
5 h, 16 m ago
Parallels is great, just not free, I use UTM on Mac and Proxmox for everything else
2 h, 9 m ago
Good offer, although I have my doubts with Broadcom. Do I give it another go, or stick with virtualbox? Not sure I trust them
1 h, 54 m ago
VirtualBox is crippled without the Extension Pack, Oracle won't sell you fewer than 100 licenses for that making it effectively unlicensable *for anything commercial.

I wouldn't be trusting Broadcom or Oracle either if I had an option.

What's your host? If it's Windows, have you considered just using Hyper-V? If you have something you can run Proxmox on, have you looked at that? (edited)
1 h, 46 m ago
Vmware is dead. Long live Proxmox.
1 h, 23 m ago
As a Proxmox user myself, and I agree with what you're saying broadly post-ESXi abandonment, I don't think Workstation and Fusion necessarily fit the same usecase as Proxmox. But if Proxmox fits someone's usecase, it's 100% worth a look.