To tell you about Raspberry Pi, it is a Single Board Computer (SBC) that comes in the size of a credit card developed by Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK-based educational charity. Raspberry Pi OS (previously called Raspbian) is an operating system developed to work on Raspberry Pi. However, in this post, we are not talking about the Raspberry Pi OS that runs on a tiny computer. We are talking about the desktop version of Raspberry Pi OS which is developed to run on regular Desktop and Laptop computers. You can install this as your computer’s main operating system. And, you can also run it in a virtual environment as a VM in VMWare Workstation, We are going to cover a detailed Step-by-Step Procedure to Install Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation in this post.
Table of Contents
What Is Desktop Version Of Raspberry Pi OS?
It is an official Debian/Ubuntu based operating system released by Raspberry Pi Foundation for desktop or laptop computers. This operating system is developed especially for the old computers which struggle to run the modern operating systems. You can install this as your computer’s main operating system. Moreover, you can also run it in a virtual environment as a VM in VMWare Workstation, or create a USB stick or other medium from which you can run it when required. Let’s see how to Install Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation in this post.
What Is VMWare Workstation?
VMWare Workstation is an application developed by VMWare to create virtual machines, containers, and Kubernetes clusters on any desktop or server system. VMWare released VMWare Workstation in two products: VMWare Workstation Pro and VMWare Workstation Player. VMWare Workstation Player is released on a free license with limited features, whereas VMWare Workstation Pro is an enterprise paid version that has loaded with a lot of features. Full documentation is published on the VMWare portal for free. Refer to the documentation from here.
Prerequisites To Install Raspberry Pi OS On VMWare Workstation:
To install Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation you just need a physical machine, VMWare Workstation Pro or Player, and Raspberry Pi OS ISO image for disktop.
- A host system with minimum:
- 8 GB of memory
- A quad core CPU
- 500 GB of Hard Drive
- VMWare Workstation Pro or Player application:0
- Raspberry Pi OS ISO image to install on VMWare Workstation.
How To Install Raspberry Pi OS On VMWare Workstation?
Time needed: 30 minutes
How to Install Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation?
- Fier up VMWare Workstation
Download the VMWare Workstation application for your host operating system and install it on your machine. The installation procedure is pretty simple and straight. Read the documentation for more details. Open the app after installation. Create a new Virtual Machine.
- Select Custom Configuration Wizard
You can choose either Typical or Custom Wizard. We recommend selecting Custom if you want to install with all the configurations. If you are okay with default configurations then go ahead with Typical configurations.
- Select Virtual Machine Hardware Compatibility
Go with the default option if you don’t have the choice.
- Select the Operating System Media
Select ‘I will install the operating system later’ for an interactive installation.
- Select Guest Operating System
- Name the Virtual Machine Name and location
Type a name and give the location details.
- Allocate the Processors
Assign the processors, Calculate the processor required to run the host machine. Assign the leftover resources to the virtual machine.
- Allocate the Memory for Virtual Machine
Memory allocation calculation is the same as the processor allocation. Leave sufficient memory for the host system and allocate the remaining memory for the virtual machine.
- Choose the Network Configuration
Select any one of the network configurations as per your requirement.
- Select the I/O Controller Type
- Select Disk Type
- Select Virtual Disk
Select the Virtual Disk if you have or create one.
- Select Disk Capacity
Select the disk size. Selecting a single disk will increase the performance. However, selecting a split disk will help in the disk transfer scenario.
- Specify Virtual Disk File
- Create Virtual Machine
- Supply Raspberry Pi ISO Image to Virtual Machine
Download Raspberry Pi image. Edit the CD/DVD settings and import the downloaded Raspberry Pi image.
- Install Raspberry Pi on VMWare Workstation
- Power On the Virtual Machine
Press the Play button to power on the Virtual Machine.
- Welcome to the Raspberry Pi Desktop Virtual Machine
After powering on the Virtual machine, you will be greeted with a welcome screen like below.
- The first Welcome greet after the boot
- Set Country, Language, and Timezone
- Set the new password for the user ‘pi’
- Update Raspberry Pi Operating System
- Complete the Setup
- Raspberry Pi Desktop
This is how you should install Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation. We hope this tutorial post will help you in installing Raspberry Pi OS on VMWare Workstation. Thanks for reading this post. Please share this post and help to secure the digital world. Visit our social media page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, & Medium and subscribe to receive updates like this.
Thank you for providing such an informative and inspiring website. I came her via a random search for something to do with the Raspberry Pi in general. There was some great information, on your site covering things I’d never really thought about before – I’d never thought of making a security system before – but it’s now on the to do list. I especially like that you are not confined to Pi’s on their own, like most Pi related sites. To me, a Pi is a tool but may not be the best way to achieve a desired outcome. Also confining ones interest to PI’s alone is not the best way to extend your overall computer knowledge. So from your site I now feel compelled to try out Windows 2019 server in VMware. As an aside: I did already have my database already set up for PostgreSQL on a PC. I was hoping to just be able to move that to the Pi. I could move the data but not my prefered front end [PgAdmin III] which was not released for ARM architecture. In the end the need to learn to compile source code for PgAdmin and a few other disparities between the different database versions made me have to put the project on the back burner. Speaking of which, how to compile C programs on the Pi is not something I’ve seen covered much elsewhere (an idea for another article?), I’m quite new to Linux so this is a grey area for me. Anyway thanks again for a great web site.
Hi Steve,
We are really pleased to see these comments. We welcome any feedback, suggestion, or requests from people like you. Please share us anything you want to share here.
is this a 32 bit or 64 bit ?
It’s 32 bit.
HI, I have followed these steps and successfully created the virtual machine. However, changes with settings, file, apps, etc are being removed once I reboot the raspberry PI. Is this a known issue?
No, this is not something usual!
you need to install it like what im doing bruh…
Excellent!
What about instead of a raspian OS, i use different OS which is already configured to boot in raspberry pi ????????
Raspberry Pi OS is the new release of Raspian OS. There are multiple OS available on the Raspberry Pi official site for download. In addition to that You can try any OS which is built for IoT architecture.