VM Workstation lets you clone directly in the program, with VMPlayer you have to manually copy the virtual machine folders.

VMPlayer is the free version of VM Workstation which I get for free through my school. These features require the VMware tools which I show you how to install on Ubuntu as well. You can easily drag and drop files from your virtual machine to your host machine and add shared folders from your host machine into your virtual machine. You can copy and paste from your host machine into the virtual machines – this is very unreliable with VirtualBox in my experience. I prefer VMPlayer to VirtualBox because I find it far more reliable for making your life easier with the additional virtual machine perks. When I'm done fully testing a guide I destroy the clone, I will show you how to quite easily clone virtual machines in a follow up guide with VMPlayer the VirtualBox alternative. The original virtual machines are the pure, fresh installs which are then cloned so that I do not taint the original. You do not want to break your production environment because you think it would be cool to test some new software – that is what virtual machines and test environments are for! I have fresh test environments for all Windows versions, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OSX that I clone before I start testing a new guide.

Your production environment is your live running environment that you depend on to do certain tasks. I would bet most people do testing on their production environments. Virtual Machines lets you have a playground environment where you can test software before you install it on your actual home media server. Test environments are incredibly useful for anyone who wants to tinker with new software.

Vm player linux