One question about vmware fusion.?

Question

Hello, Im a vmware newbie and a linux newbie as well. I really want to get what really is vmware, but as much as I read I cant get the concept. When I run linux on my macbook using vmware fusion, is really linux? i mean its 100% linux kernel, or is a mix of leopard with linux? Because when I install linux using dual boot, my bluetooth keyboard, mighty mouse, sound card, and wireless card didnt work. Now that im using vmware, everything works! So its not really linux but a mix? Or vmware include some pre-built drivers? Let me know please, Im confuse and want to learn.

Answer 1

I'm a VMWare Fusion user as well and have installed Vista and the latest Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro. VMWare acts as an intermediary between OS X and the Linux distribution package you install.

The nice thing about Fusion is that it acts kind of like an agent on your behalf, making sure your hosted OS has all the necessary components installed so that your Linux installation can communicate properly with your Mac's hardware components and ports like USB and keyboards, mice, displays or whatever. That's what VMWare Tools does to make the new OS work better and integrate with your hardware. It's very user-friendly that way. It can even help you smooth out your installation so that you don't have to do as much on your own.

In dual boot, or Boot Camp, Apple specifically creates the components and drivers needed to install Windows XP or Vista. In this way, Apple's Boot Camp acts like your agent, smoothing out the process for you.

However, Apple's Boot Camp doesn't work specifically with the various Linux distribs like Ubuntu or openSUSE. So if you want to marry your dual boot partition to the Mac hardware, you're on your own. Linux distributions are so varied and specific depending on the flavor, you'll need to be a real programmer to figure out how to make the various Linux drivers work with your Mac's hardware components. VMWare is already programmed to do it, so it's likely going to be better to go that way if you want to run Linux on your Mac and have it play nice.