VMWare free vs VBox for windows 10

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1

Good day to you all. I don’t know if this is the correct category for this so please tell me if I’m doing something wrong. I want to run windows 10 (I will only use Office 365) on a VM but I dont’ know which to pick.

inxi -Fazy

System:
  Kernel: 5.14.2-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.14-x86_64 
  root=UUID=3e711149-8ebe-45af-8e9a-78a1cdacff3f rw quiet apparmor=1 
  security=apparmor resume=UUID=d27dc7f4-ce4f-48b8-ba69-9971d9cc4ca0 
  udev.log_priority=3 
  Desktop: KDE Plasma 5.22.5 tk: Qt 5.15.2 wm: kwin_x11 vt: 1 dm: SDDM 
  Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire A514-53 v: V1.16 serial: <filter> 
  Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: IL model: Sneezy_IL v: V1.16 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.16 
  date: 01/18/2021 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 31.7 Wh (100.0%) condition: 31.7/53.0 Wh (59.9%) 
  volts: 16.3 min: 15.4 model: PANASONIC KT004 AP19B5L type: Li-ion 
  serial: <filter> status: Full cycles: 386 
CPU:
  Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-1005G1 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Ice Lake family: 6 model-id: 7E (126) stepping: 5 microcode: A6 cache: 
  L2: 4 MiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 9524 
  Speed: 1070 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1070 2: 1003 
  3: 1013 4: 1043 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
  Type: mds status: Not affected 
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Enhanced IBRS, IBPB: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds status: Not affected 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G1 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: i915 v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:8a56 class-ID: 0300 
  Device-2: Chicony HD User Facing type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-6:3 
  chip-ID: 04f2:b64f class-ID: 0e02 serial: <filter> 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 compositor: kwin_x11 driver: 
  loaded: modesetting alternate: fbdev,vesa display-ID: :0 screens: 1 
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1366x768 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 361x203mm (14.2x8.0") 
  s-diag: 414mm (16.3") 
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 res: 1366x768 hz: 60 dpi: 112 size: 309x173mm (12.2x6.8") 
  diag: 354mm (13.9") 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (ICL GT1) v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.2 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Ice Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_sof_pci_intel_icl 
  bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:34c8 class-ID: 0401 
  Device-2: C-Media USB PnP Sound Device type: USB 
  driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus-ID: 1-4:6 chip-ID: 0d8c:013a 
  class-ID: 0300 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.14.2-1-MANJARO running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: sndio v: N/A running: no 
  Sound Server-3: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-4: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes 
  Sound Server-5: PipeWire v: 0.3.37 running: yes 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ice Lake-LP PCH CNVi WiFi driver: iwlwifi v: kernel 
  port: 4000 bus-ID: 00:14.3 chip-ID: 8086:34f0 class-ID: 0280 
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 
  bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
  IF: enp1s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel AX201 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 
  bus-ID: 1-10:4 chip-ID: 8087:0026 class-ID: e001 
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: down bt-service: N/A rfk-block: 
  hardware: no software: no address: see --recommends 
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci 
  v: 3.0 port: 4060 bus-ID: 00:17.0 chip-ID: 8086.282a rev: 30 class-ID: 0104 
  Device-1: md126 maj-min: 9:126 type: mdraid level: N/A status: inactive 
  size: N/A 
  Info: report: N/A blocks: 2136 chunk-size: N/A 
  Components: Online: N/A Spare: 
  0: nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 size: 476.94 GiB state: S 
  Device-2: md127 maj-min: 9:127 type: mdraid level: N/A status: inactive 
  size: N/A 
  Info: report: N/A blocks: 2944 chunk-size: N/A 
  Components: Online: N/A Spare: 
  0: nvme1n1 maj-min: 259:5 size: 27.25 GiB state: S 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.4 TiB used: 145.57 GiB (10.1%) 
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 maj-min: 259:0 vendor: Intel model: HBRPEKNX0202A 
  size: 476.94 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 15.8 Gb/s 
  lanes: 2 type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: G002 temp: 27.9 C 
  ID-2: /dev/nvme1n1 maj-min: 259:5 vendor: Intel model: HBRPEKNX0202AO 
  size: 27.25 GiB block-size: physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 15.8 Gb/s 
  lanes: 2 type: SSD serial: <filter> rev: K5110440 temp: 32.9 C 
  ID-3: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: Seagate model: ST1000LM048-2E7172 
  size: 931.51 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s 
  type: HDD rpm: 5400 serial: <filter> rev: 0001 scheme: MBR 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 400 GiB size: 392.65 GiB (98.16%) used: 73.47 GiB (18.7%) 
  fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 512 MiB size: 511 MiB (99.80%) 
  used: 816 KiB (0.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda4 maj-min: 8:4 
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8 GiB used: 13.3 MiB (0.2%) priority: -2 
  dev: /dev/sda3 maj-min: 8:3 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 51.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 211 Uptime: 41m wakeups: 1 Memory: 7.45 GiB 
  used: 4.74 GiB (63.6%) Init: systemd v: 249 tool: systemctl Compilers: 
  gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: apt: 0 pacman: 1392 lib: 392 flatpak: 0 Shell: Zsh 
  v: 5.8 default: Bash v: 5.1.8 running-in: konsole inxi: 3.3.06

neofetch

██████████████████  ████████   soumi@Hori 
██████████████████  ████████   ---------- 
██████████████████  ████████   OS: Manjaro Linux x86_64 
██████████████████  ████████   Host: Aspire A514-53 V1.16 
████████            ████████   Kernel: 5.14.2-1-MANJARO 
████████  ████████  ████████   Uptime: 44 mins 
████████  ████████  ████████   Packages: 1392 (pacman) 
████████  ████████  ████████   Shell: bash 5.1.8 
████████  ████████  ████████   Resolution: 1366x768 
████████  ████████  ████████   DE: Plasma 5.22.5 
████████  ████████  ████████   WM: KWin 
████████  ████████  ████████   Theme: Breeze Light [Plasma], Breeze [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Icons: breeze [Plasma], breeze [GTK2/3] 
████████  ████████  ████████   Terminal: konsole 
                               CPU: Intel i3-1005G1 (4) @ 3.400GHz 
                               GPU: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G1 
                               Memory: 4531MiB / 7630MiB

Thanks in advance

2

:warning:

Windows license

When you run Windows in a VM you need a digital or retail license. Manjaro Forum Piracy Policy

VMware

VMware is generally unsupported on Arch-based distributions - follow the instructions in below topic - and it should work.

VirtualBox

VirtualBox will give you a rocksolid Windows. It is simpler to setup than VMware and has extensive tips on getting the best from it.

4 Likes
3

I’ve been using VirtualBox along time to try out different systems and the dev versions of Manjaro.I also have Win10 installed in VirtualBox and as @linux-aarhus stated it’s very rocksolid.

1 Like
4

I’ve been using vmware for months on manjaro with zero issues. If you decide to go with vmware then make sure to install from the aur not vmware website. If you install from the aur it will install all the dependencies automatically

1 Like
5

Very important point

No it will not.

Manjaro uses a different naming for the kernel headers so you have to know which kernel(s) installed on your system and install the headers beforehand.

You are also required to enable the relevant vmware services by hand.

6

All I can say is when I installed vmware from the aur last year all I had to do was reboot and everything worked and has continued to work since. I’ve not had to enable anything by hand and if I install a new kernel rebuilding vmware installs the needed kernel modules

7

That could be because you already had the kernel headers installed.

If you don’t need network inside the VM then you are correct.

I just dug into the PKGBUILD and since I last had a rendevouz with vmware PKGBUILD there has been a small change.

optdepends=(
  'linux-headers: build modules against Arch kernel'
)

I cannot figure out why the headers are optional as a hard dependency on dkms usually requries headers to be present for dkms to compile the kernel modules and there is two patches in the sources.

The post install mesage now reads

==> Before using VMware, you need to reboot or load vmw_vmci and vmmon kernel modules (in a terminal on root: modprobe -a vmw_vmci vmmon)
==> You may also need to enable some of the following services:
- vmware-networks: to have network access inside VMs
- vmware-usbarbitrator: to connect USB devices inside VMs
These services can be activated during boot by enabling .service units or only when a VM is started by enabling .path units.

Either way - most people would want to have at least network access in the vm - which requires manual intervention to enable either .path or .service units.

I have updated the referenced guide accordingly.

2 Likes
8

Pretty sure I just installed vmware tools from the aur for Internet access but it was 12 months ago.

1 Like
9

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