[knightcon]

I am looking at building a home web development environment setup. I don't want to have to go out and purchase licenses for all the O/S's that I need to be able to run this setup and I have heard some good things about VMware. What do you think?

[Nathan H]

Well, you don't need to run VMware to create a development environent, even on windows you could create an XAMP server.

[m001d]

Are you trying to set up a server on VM for testing purposes, or just to test out stuff in general, like in different platforms?

If it's just for testing in general, like the above poster said, you can set up wamp or xampp and make you computer run like a server. Very easy to set up and use. It can be enabled/disabled too so you don't have to leave your computer as a server all the time.

If you want to install diff platforms, like linux, xp, vista, etc in vmware. I'm not too sure if you need a license. You could just install linux since it's free.

[knightcon]

I want to have a variety of platforms available so that i can test out my software for cross platform compatability.

[Nathan H]

Well, you should have a liscence for every installation of OS that you use. For example, if you Run XP as the host OS, thats one liscence. Installing it in VMWare needs a second liscence. All installations, Virtual or Real, still need a valid liscence

[knightcon]

Ah Ok, thanks guy's I will probably just wind up using a separate box for each system then. Ta