Category: Virtual Appliances

I have built a number of Virtual Appliances following what I consider to be Best Practices, all packaged in the OVA format.

  • OVA format
  • Single flat file disk
  • open-vm-tools (or open-vm-tools-desktop) installed
  • Root account enabled
  • SSH enabled
  • All virtual hardware and devices not immediately needed are removed.
  • KISS Principal applied for usability

Please feel free to download and use these appliances according to the terms of their free and/or open-source GPL licenses. These Virtual Appliances are provided without warranty of any kind, so use them at your own risk.

Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS

Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS User: administrator Password: P@ssw0rd        (please note that’s a zero in P@ssw0rd) Open-vm-tools installed root is NOT configured, to configure root, open terminal and run sudo passwd root

Linux Mint Cinnamon Virtual Appliance OVA

Linux Mint is an OS designed around usability. This Virtual Appliance has the open-vm-tools-desktop package installed for usability. The username is: administrator The password for administrator is: P@ssw0rd root is available after logging in as administrator by using the command: su – The password for root is: P@ssw0rd NOTE: in terminal, root may be used
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Fedora Workstation 31 Virtual Appliance OVA

Fedora Linux (Desktop) OVA was created in VMware Workstation using the KISS Principal . Fedora is one of the most advanced OSs available and a beautiful desktop. The username is: administrator The password for administrator is: P@ssw0rd root is available after logging in as administrator by using the command: su – The password for root
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Kali Linux Virtual Appliance OVA

This Kali Linux (Desktop) OVA was created in VMware Workstation using basic common sense. Kali is the default OS used for security and Penetration Testing. It contains many pre-configured packages specifically for security testing and network reconnaissance. Also, I have installed the open-vm-tools-desktop binary to make the screen run correctly in hypervisors like VMware Workstation.
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VMware Photon OS 3

Photon OS is VMware’s own version of Linux, optimized specifically to run as a VM. It is very RHEL-Like, so it will be a welcome improvement for VMware users who have been adapting to SUSE in recent years. I DO believe in working AS the root user (instead of all the ‘sudo’ garbage) but I DO NOT believe in allowing
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