VMware? Why is so many people using it?

I know Vmware is the virtual PC thing but why is it so useful and so many people are using it?

Is it cus of linux thing? if so what can you do with linux? is Windows 7 bad?... or does linux have something that Windows 7 doesnt have?

 

Thats a whole lot of subjective questions there, as for why VMware and other VM's are useful that can also be case by case but typically is used for running other OS guests on your preferred host OS, Linux guest on Windows and vis versa for example. Another use is sandboxing where the user may need an isolated environment where they control all the variables to debug projects etc.

Your Linux and Windows targeted questions are broad and subjective, thats a can of worms you'll never get a clear answer to without exploring it yourself.

 

Dual boot alternative

 

As an example I use it to run windows 7 from OS X on my macbook.
For games I boot directly to Win 7

 

I for one use it because of work, I can have different server environments on it to test our software (that's configured exactly as our servers) for presentation/demo purposes.

I could load up a windows OS to test out stuff without screwing up my laptop.

Other people uses it to run linux or iOS

I also set it up so my work environment (development machine, office apps etc) is in a VMware and have my main OS as my gaming PC at home

so basically if you have a powerful enough machine you could run say 4 or 5 different versions of windows configured to your needs (currently I have windows 2008 set up as a TFS server and domain server, another one as a database server and a different one for Oracle and Postgre databases, a dev machine with visual studio, ms office etc on windows 7... all running on 1 laptop/desktop


some people also uses it for sandboxing, where you can test questionable web sites or test questionable software and if there's a virus or malware, it'll only affect the vmware os and not your host.

as for the linux questions, really depends on where and how you'd use it, I love the linux web servers more than IIS (even if my job requires me to be a microsoft nerd), but since windows is more mainstream people are more used to it.

I know quite a few people that'll never go back to a windows machine and live solely on Linux, but it does have quite a bit of a learning curve so to say which is better really depends on what you'll use it for.

 

Oh wow thank you for all you guys' reply! I get it now.

 

As Geekz said, I did some testing where I ran a domain controller and some clients on their own virtual network, tested installing various services and server functions etc - all with only having the single laptop.

I know some consultants who bring their own laptop to a client, start up a virtual computer that can connect to the client network, being a fully-authorized and connected client build - but it runs within their own tweaked and customized machine.

 

I use Virtualbox for a lot of different stuff.. E.g. I don't want all the apps from work (which have 700 backround process trying to connect to my work network) on my real system. Had the same with stuff from school. Running a virtualbox on my laptop is no problem (i7 hyperthread, 16GB RAM). Also when downloading stuff which could be malware and vmware/virtualbox can be very handy.. or just to try out a few apps without having to mess around on the real system.