VMware recently released version 4.0 of VMware Fusion, their virtualisation solution for Mac OS X. I tried out the new version on my Mac Pro under Mac OS X Snow Leopard yesterday.
The update from VMware 3.1.3 to 4.0.1 worked absolutely smoothly. I didn’t even have to reboot my Mac. Both of my virtual machines booted without problems afterwards. And the really good news is that NetBSD, although still not officially supported as a guest operating system, continues to run very well under VMware Fusion. My NetBSD/i386 current machine using four virtual cores and 3GB of memory actually runs faster since the update:
| VMware | Time to run ./build.sh -j 8 distribution |
| 3.1.3 | 42:47 minutes |
| 4.0.1 | 40:30 minutes |
I haven’t particularly noticed any of the new features except the single window user interface. I suppose those enhancements are more visible if you use Window extensively.
I haven’t decided yet whether VMware Fusion 4.0 was worth the money. But nothing got broken and I could now safely upgrade to Mac OS X Lion. If you think this update is too expensive you can always try out VirtualBox.