If you are near capacity, your host system (Windows XP for instance) is probably being affected and running less than optimally. As of the edit date of this article, it would be prudent to have 512 MB of physical system memory to avoid frustrations with Linux virtual systems and a must for all Windows XP virtual systems.ĭisk space works much the same. However, if 256 MB is not enough memory for your host system, it will not be enough from which to run any virtual system. You will notice that Windows (host system) will be noticeably slower while running your virtual Linux system. If you are merrily plugging away with 256 MB of memory and a modest Pentium 4 processor for your host system, most Linux virtual systems will run tolerably in conjunction with your host system.

However, if you plan to run a virtual Windows XP system, plan on having more resources since operating systems such as Windows XP tend to be resource hungry. If you are choosing to run a typical Linux system as your virtual system, the requirements on the host system are relatively low.

Any performance hit on the host will affect the virtual system, so if you're short on memory and disk space already, stop and rethink this unless you really know what you are doing. If you have 256 MB of memory and the virtual system has specified that it will use 128 MB of memory, you will only have 128 MB left for the host system. Your host and virtual systems share your physical memory. Your computer (hereon referred to as the 'Host system') requirements depend on the virtual systems you plan to use. In order to run VMPlayer, one must have a reasonably stable Windows 2000 or Windows XP computer.

Install VMPlayer from the downloaded executable. Anywhere from 150MB-10GB free disk space depending on usage, 1GB for this Howto.256MB memory minimum for Windows XP, 128MB for Windows 2000.A functioning Windows 2K/XP/Vista computer.

Windows vmware player