VMware Workstation 17 Pro It has already been published as a new stable version of a well-known virtualization solution oriented, as the name suggests, to the professional sector. The highlight of this release is official support for Windows 11 guests (virtual machines) and virtual support for TPM 2.0, one of the features required by the latest version of the Microsoft operating system to officially run on a computer.

VMware Workstation 17 Pro is an application that needs no introduction at this point, as it is a widely used solution for virtualizing both servers and desktop systems in enterprise environments. On the other hand, there is VMware Workstation Player, a version with limited features and aimed at the home sector. VMware is a prestigious company in its segment and excels in the good performance offered by its solutions for running operating systems in its virtualized environments.

According to the company, VMware Workstation 17 Pro compatible with all Intel and AMD (x86) processors released since 2011 and officially supports Windows and Linux (there is VMware Fusion for macOS) at the host level. However, despite cross-platform support, it is a proprietary application and lacks the standards-compliant installers that have been used on the desktop for years on Linux.

VMware Workstation Player 17 on Fedora Linux.

Among the novelties, we find the automatic start of virtual machines after the start of the host system; new supported operating systems, which are Windows 11, Windows Server 2022, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, Debian 11 and Ubuntu 22.04; Virtual TPM 2.0 support to properly support Windows 11 and other operating systems that may require such functionality; option to choose between full or fast virtual machine encryption; OpenGL 4.3 for rendering graphics at the virtual machine level, although Windows 7 or later and Linux 5.16 along with Mesa 22.2 are required; plus support for version 1.2 of the Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM).

Among the acknowledged issues is one where the application shows the wrong version of FreeBSD when creating a virtual machine from a version 12 or 13 operating system ISO image. This can be resolved by manually setting the system type to the correct version. On the other hand, for 64-bit Fedora Linux guests, there is no choice between using UEFI firmware and BIOS.

Full details on VMware Workstation 17 Pro are available in the release notes, while the paid application can be obtained from the download section of the company’s website. We remember that for home users there is VMWare Workstation Player.