Installing Ubuntu from a VMWare appliance?

Has anyone tried to install Ubuntu (with or without VMWare Tools installed) from a VMWare appliance? I have a MacBook with Fusion and am considering installing Ubuntu to check it out for fun, but don't want to spend an inordinate amount of time fooling with it -- it occurred to me that using an appliance (particularly with Tools already installed) would save time over installing it directly myself and running through all the baloney that you apparently have to do to get Tools running. I was wondering if anyone had tried it, how simple it actually was and how it worked.

Thanks in advance.

Actually, installing Ubuntu either way is easy. The latest Ubuntu appliance consists of version 8.04. (And yes, guest tools already included.)

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/

Regards.

Couldn't quite figure out the appliance thing but went ahead and installed Ubuntu from the downloaded .ISO file. A snap to install but can't figure out how to get VMWare tools running; all the blog/post recipes seem not to work well for me and I am hardly comfortable in the Terminal. Hopefully, VMWare will post a simple fix. The lack of Tools does not affect the basic operation of Ubuntu but does apparently affect resizing the windows, graphics resolution, etc. Any bright ideas, please post.

Interestingly, Windows XP under Fusion finds it hard to recognize when I access the internet via my USB modem, as opposed to my wireless. But Ubuntu recognizes both immediately without any futzing around. It's quite cool and I recommend checking it out for fun if you have some time.

Thanks!

Why install Ubuntu onto an appliance when you can download a fullblow, perfectly configured Ubuntu appliance?

I am new to this and could not figure out how to install the appliance once I downloaded it, so I just installed Ubuntu 8.04 from the .ISO file at Ubuntu.com. This was my first exposure to anything Linux-related, so I took the path of least resistance. I saw that the most popular appliance was indeed Ubuntu with VM Ware tools included (from May), but could not connect the dots. Must be in the slow learning group ... But I really like Ubuntu from what I've seen so far.

if youw ant to fool around with ubuntu why dont you just run the live cd?

Because I wanted to do it as a VMWare guest OS for independent reasons here at work. Didn't think you could do Live CD that way but honestly didn't spend any time really looking at it either.

Cheers

with the live cd all you do is burn the image to dvd and then insert disk, start it up, select it to boot ubuntu and then you go ahead and play! it is great, granted you do lose all changes and stuff with a reboot but simply for playing around it is no problem....

i ran ubuntu as my main OS for 5 months off of a dvd with a flash drive as its storage (no HD). i only had to restart twice (one crash that was induced by me trying to do 18 things at once with next to no ram, one power outage) it took me less than 20 minutes each time to reinstall/update everything ineeded ...highly suggested by me for anyone who simply wants to fool around with this OS.

Thanks, I agree (now that I've looked at it) that Live CD is a good thing and have recommended it to others.

Cheers