Running Chrome OS on VMware Player 3.0
Google released the source code of their upcoming Chrome OS, and claimed that the official release of this Operation System won’t happen until next year 2010. So now, if we want to taste the goodies that Chrome OS brings to us, we would have to build Chromium OS from the source first. Luckily, several developers out there have released installable builds that saves us the trouble, one of which is from gdgt.com that offers Chrome OS in VMware format. And here is how I got mine copy and run it on my VMware Player 3.0.
Step 1: Get a copy of VMDK image from gdgt.com
You will have to sign up an account in order to get to the download page. The download file is about 320M big in ZIP format. Once it’s extracted, it becomes 737M big which perfectly fits in 1G flash drive.
Step 2: Extract the VMDK file and save it to your local disk
For example, I saved this VMDK file to c:\-data\virtual images\Chrome OS folder.
Step 3: Fire up VMware Player, and create a VMX file
Well, if you don’t have it yet, you can get one from VMware for free. It’s one of a few products VMware offers for free.
Because I couldn’t get VMware Player to run the VMDK file without the configuration file (.VMX) in place, I had to run through the process of Creating a New Virtual Machine to create one. To do so, you can simply click Create a New Virtual Machine icon to start.
Then, select I will install the operating system later option in the next window and click Next.
Select Other in the next window, and click Next.
Name the Virtual machine name to Chrome OS, and select the folder where I saved the Chrome OS image file. Click Next to carry on. You may get a warning message saying that there is already one VMDK file in the same folder. That’s fine, just click Continue to move on.
Once the New Virtual Machine Wizard is finished, open Windows Explorer and browse to the folder where all VMDK and VMX files are saved, replace the new created VMDK file with the Chrome OS image. Before you firstly launch it, make sure to give the virtual machine at least 512M of RAM.
Step 4: Launch and Enjoy
That’s it, in a short while after starting the virtual machine, I can start tasting the goodies that Chrome OS brings to us.
This did the trick, thanks a bunch.
I will post this link wherever I go. Great job figuring this out.
Well, I was able to play around with this yesterday, and I am not too thrilled.
It seems that either there is much more work to do in regards to an Operating system, or this is simply an online gadget. I found no file system to speak of. I was unable to make simple changes such as display resolution. I understand it is an early release that was not really meant to be used, but the feeling I get is that it’s simply a bootable web browser. I enjoy Google and what they have done for the World, so I will definitely be following this project.
Thanks again.
@Ronald, agree, to be honest, I wasn’t impressed, which is why I didn’t write up a blog talking about it.
And yes, because it’s from Google and considering how much awesome work they have done in the past. This project is definitely worth following.
Cheers.
They could at least make it interesting. And the whole thing about marketing this to VMWARE player when there are several steps needed (depending on the version of player you use) is pretty sick.
Whatever
@Df Dck, agree, all it needed is just a simple configuration file to be added.
Well, it’s still in the very stage to the Chrome OS. things will get better, I believe.
I have installed Chrome OS on one of my netbooks and the performance of Chrome OS is just okay. there is nothing fancy or very special about it. It was just a sort of GUI version of linux or something.
.
I’m a big fan of Google but I was not impressed at all… to me it not more than next version of chrome browser. which makes me think : why the 720 MBs?????
I tried this but i did not follow the
“open Windows Explorer and browse to the folder where all VMDK and VMX files are saved, replace the new created VMDK file with the Chrome OS image.”
What am I doing wrong?
@Mchael Wylie,
The easiest way is to delete the VMDK file created by the wizard and rename the Chrome OS VMDK image file to that name.
Hope that helps.