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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

workstation 12 has no unity mode for linux hosts or guests

It's in the release notes :

"The following features have reached end of life in Workstation 12 Pro and have been removed:

  • Unity mode on Linux guest and host operating systems "

This is a terrible decision and will keep me from buying the upgrade. I use linux to host windows guests in unity mode and very much want this feature.


Thanks,

Matthew

54 Replies
joemck
Contributor
Contributor

Seriously? Log me as another loyal user refusing the update and planning to jump ship to VirtualBox when Player 7 becomes obsolete.

I understand how difficult it is to support, what with all the different desktop environments in Linux. But remove the feature? Seriously? Just leave it in and put a note saying it may not work as expected in all situations, and is unsupported. Please, give us an unsupported and imperfect feature rather than taking it away altogether.

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stephenhowellvc
Contributor
Contributor

I've been using VMware workstation since the early 5 and 6 releases. Unity was the reason why, as I develop on Linux but am forced to run Outlook.

From the inside VMware never really supported Linux on desktops, you were on your own if you ran that and the IT department was a regular corporate IT organisation with little understanding of anything non-Windows, they struggled to support Mac too. Obviously the Mac market is better publicity tho, so that explains that....

Now I guess it's time to try VirtualBox. I've looked in the past when Workstation was beset by late updates and incompatibilities with kernel drivers. These problems would kill my WS install (on Ubuntu LTS of all things) for days and I've had to roll-back every upgrade to workstation, research the bug I had for a few days and then re-try. Every single upgrade to Workstation.

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rayblack
Contributor
Contributor

Been using Workstation since version 2, just about to purchase the NZ$200+ upgrade when I decided to check the forums, boy am I glad. I was stymied by the debacle when the Tools stopped working on Linux for some 4 months and at that time decided to go with VirtualBox, I figured that if they had problems at least I wasn't out of pocket, decided, against my better judgement to give VMware another shot, however after reading quite a few of the threads here I have decided to save my money, I'll stick with my version 11 and concentrate more on VB which has worked well for me so far. Thanks for the heads up on the non advance of WS.

Ray

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DaenksEV
Contributor
Contributor

With this move VMware continues along the trend of alienating their most hardcore supporters.

R.I.P. I say.

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matthewls
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Well, it does feel the same way as when IBM started backing away from OS/2. I suspect that Linux workstation users represent such a tiny fraction of VMware's revenues that their cost/benefit estimate makes all but  system administration of virtual servers, etc., a money losing proposition.

Many companies follow a developmental trajectory that  starts small with technical goals, amazing innovation, and growth supported by hardcore users that transitions into the kind of larger, publicly held corporation whose main goal is financial survival and shareholder benefit. With open source, the goal is advancing technical excellence--the product is the goal.  I'd guess that VMware's Workstation for Linux engineers are disappointed with the current choices too.

The good news is that VMware has contributed to Linux development and provided open source code, including (I'm guessing some of this)  KVM,  virtual graphics kernel modules, WINE development, etc.. I don't know anything about code sharing between  VMware and Oracle, but VirtualBox has become quite good and in some ways handier than Workstation. For example, you can pause a VB guest in seamless ("unity") mode. VB does not now support seamless windows 10, but otherwise windows 10 works well. And it's open source with hardcore enthusiasts pushing it forward. It may be where more of the hardcore lives, virtually.

Thanks to VMware for all the good years!

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totmann
Contributor
Contributor

How sad to get to know the fact after lots of digging up and googling...Just downgraded to WS11

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GrayGeek
Contributor
Contributor

I know that this is not going to make any difference or change the VMWARE policy and/or its business decisions,  But, I still need to mention how and when  the VMWARE started.   The first VMWARE product (I do not remember its name) was announced back in 1998  OpenSource World - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It ran  on LINUX only.  Six to eight months later they had MS WINDOWS version ready.  So,  originally  the product was developed on linux. Why ? The source code for LINUX kernel was available.  It was easier for them to write a kernel driver.  For long time the company was very friendly to Linux people. They had , so called , student pricing, Upgrade for personal use was affordable.  Later on (2004 ???)  the management (ownership ??) changed and  Linux support started down spiralling  slowly but steadily. It is really a time  to switch to  Oracle's Virtual Box.

GrayGeek
Contributor
Contributor

ADDENDUM:

I could not make WINDOWS XP running on VMWARE for Linux. The XP started and immediately went into reboot mode (looping). This was the  VMWARE's straw that broke camel's back.  I am done with VMWARE for good. Installed VirtualBox, followed with WINDOWS XP. Everything worked out of the box.

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janvanveldhuize
Contributor
Contributor

Damn...

This was one of the features I loved. I am running Windows guests on Ubuntu.

I am considering migrating my machines to VirtualBox which can do this out of the box for free.

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burnbrighter
Contributor
Contributor

Is there a place I can express my enthusiasm for bringing unity support for linux back to the product?

I want to keep a positive note to this thread, but at the same time let VMWare know that I had to downgrade my license from my newly purchased workstation pro 12 to 11 to get the unity feature back for Ubuntu 14.04.  Unity (Ubuntu version) with Unity (VMWare version) has been a challenge for some time in Workstation, but one I was willing to figure out.  This feature is essential to many people stuck in the corporate world with windows, but needing linux development features in their environment.  I can think of no better way to run an IDE such as Eclipse on top of windows without unity.

Anyways, thanks guys for your hard work, but PLEASE bring back this important feature.  I don't want to be stuck on WS 11 for the rest of my life.

Cheers,

~kvs

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pgman
Contributor
Contributor

I'm in almost the same boat. I Archlinux host, WKS 12.0.1 and XP, W7 & W10 guest. The problem is that all the guest drivers, videos... must also be converted and I haven't found a way of doing it yet.

Any instructions on how?

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BringBackLinuxU
Contributor
Contributor

Please bring back Linux Unity supports.  Lacking this feature, we're forced to consider non-vmware products.  Thanks.

terryxela
Contributor
Contributor

I got WS 12 and after I realized unity was removed,  I reinstall WS 11.

BTW if you have installed WS12 and want to go back to 11, you have to uninstall WS12 otherwise the WS11 installer does not complete.

Hope VMware change his decision.

-=terry=-

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rsmith42
Contributor
Contributor

This was one of the core features that I used.  I guess I just wasted a lot of money to find out that I will be switching to a competitor's product...

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wila
Immortal
Immortal

Hello

If you "just bought" then you might be able to get a refund if you contact sales.

Alternatively, you can downgrade to version 11, which also requires sales to do so.

--

Wil

| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
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_dre_
Contributor
Contributor

VMware Team,

Please bring the Unity View on Linux back. This is an important feature. Had to reinstall v11 instead. Will be contacting support via phone to make sure we are heard.

Please support your customers. Tank you,

Andrej

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brianez21
Contributor
Contributor

This is clearly due to wrong statistics due to people disabling anonymous usage statistics, so there may be A LOT of users who really used this feature.

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burnbrighter
Contributor
Contributor

VMWare Team - PLEASE respond to our request to have this feature put back in the product!  It is essential to our productivity.  We must have this feature back.  Please let us know you are listening to your users and you are receptive of our needs.

This thread is not going away.  So please don't ignore it.

PLEASE RESPOND

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daltonfirthltd
Contributor
Contributor

Wow this is just crazy, and no response from VMware?


I was going to say I use it all the time, but clearly not enough in the week I spent trialling Workstation 12 Pro before paying the upgrade fee.

Yes I disable anonymous stats, so VMware wouldn't know about how much I use it.

Here's a thought - perhaps most people using a Linux host are IT professionals and, consequently, know better than to have their network clogged up with "anonymous usage stats"?? And so it is that VMware's view of who uses what is skewed?

Well, for the record, I develop on Linux and use a Windows VM to run all the business/project management apps. I think this is quite a common set up, a Linux host makes most sense as it is most flexible when it comes to configuring things like local nameservers, SQL servers etc. Unity is just so useful for many development scenarios.

Yes is was a bit clunky and laggy at times, but it essentially worked well enough to use on a regular basis and was one of the draws to VMware.

I'm actively considering moving from a Linux host to a Windows host (with Linux guest) but that is riddled with minor niggles and annoyances, number 1 being Linux now runs nicely on RAID1 with LVM cache, meaning my VMs currently are backed on vey fast and very reliable storage.

​VMware please, undo this ASAP!!!

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jmckibben
Contributor
Contributor

I am also in the camp of "wow... I can't believe that VMWare has removed such a useful amazing feature".

I was stuck in the world of VMWare Workstation 10 which had limited (broken) VMWare Tools support and I had to hack the shared folder mounting from host OS, but generally, Unity worked out of the box. What was great about Xubuntu 15.04 is that the 3D and 2D acceleration also worked, and well.

VMWare, please let us know how you intend to fix these issues.

If it works for you but not for us... GIVE US GUIDES, clearly just hitting next and using as it would be assumed doesn't work.

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