I’ve talked about having some kind of “browser appliance” to replace your desktop computer. So far – not that many hardware appliances seems to fit my needs. But here’s an interesting alternative. I run VMware (either Player or Server which are free or Workstation) and I have several virtual machines running, either Windows or some distribution of Linux.

To get you started on VMware and such appliances, here’s a quick guide to get you startedin just a few minutes.

The quickest way is to get the Browser Appliance which is the Ubuntu distribution running Firefox. Just download the appliance, open it up in VMware and start it. When it boots up you get a Firefox icon and off you go.

So now you got yourself a “surf station”. No need to re-install. If you make a mistake and crash the virtual machine, simply download the VMware image again and replace the one you have. Now wouldn’t it be good to have this functionality in a hardware appliance?

Another good thing is that you don’t have to worry that much about malware, spyware or viruses. First off – it’s Linux. And secondly, even though the virtual computer gets infected, it won’t spread to your host system!