The latest point release of the commercial virtualization environment for desktop machines is decidedly incremental, the changes adding little beyond official support for the most recent generation of hardware and the latest revisions of operating systems to be run either as a VMware guest or host. The main new addition is support for Windows 10 as a host and as a guest, with integration features for both scenarios. Two other VMware Workstation features have also been expanded to include Windows 10 support.

That includes Windows Universal apps and old-school, native Windows apps. Windows 10 now runs as an officially supported host and guest of VMware Workstation 12, with integration fully supported for both scenarios.

The other expanded feature is the ability to migrate physical Windows 10 installations to VMs. The only requirements are disabling User Account Control on the machine to be migrated and downloading the free VMware vCenter Converter Standalone utility which you only need to do once for any given installation of VMware Workstation.

VMware has also updated the roster of Linux distributions that run under Workstation 12; Ubuntu Like Windows 10, all of these new Linux distros will run on previous versions of Workstation; Workstation 12 merely gives you the modest benefit of formally recognizing them and perhaps the comfort of official support. Most of the other touches are UI polish — nothing groundbreaking, but convenient.

All told, Workstation 12 brings a number of nice but modest improvements. If you don’t currently use a recent version of Workstation and are seeking a better experience than free VirtualBox provides, Workstation 12 is certainly the most performant, polished, and feature-rich desktop virtualization product available.

Serdar Yegulalp is a senior writer at InfoWorld, focused on machine learning, containerization, devops, the Python ecosystem, and periodic reviews. Here are the latest Insider stories. More Insider Sign Out.

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