ThinApp is a VMware product that allows you to virtualize desktop applications.
ThinApp 4.5 allows you to move to newer Operating Systems (OS) such as Windows 7 by virtualizing applications and removing all dependencies and links to the OS. With application virtualiztion, the applications are OS agnostic.
ThinApp will basically package and combine applications into a single executable that you can deploy via a MSI, network share, Active Directory, and/or USB key (Figure A).
Figure A: ThinApp by VMware
Now that we know what ThinApp can offer, let’s virtualize OpenOffice using ThinApp.
How to ThinApp OpenOffice
1. Click Start | All Programs |VMware | Thinapp Setup Capture (Figure B & C). Setup Capture will prescan the registry so when you load your software, Thinapp can identify the changes that have taken place.
Figure B: Welcome Screen
Note: You must have a clean baseline OS with nothing installed. In order to virtualize your applications, create a VMware virtual machine (VM) and perform a snapshot of it with ThinApp installed. Now everytime you want to virtualize an application, you can snap the machine back to a clean baseline.
Figure C: Setup Capture - Ready to Prescan
2. Once the Prescan is complete, install OpenOffice inside your virtual machine (Figure D & E).
Figure D: Setup Capture - Install Application
Figure E: Installing OpenOffice
3. After the install is complete, you are ready to perform a Postscan. A Postcan (Figure F.) will detect all changes that have happened to the OS after the Prescan was completed.
Figure F: Setup Capture - Postscanning
4. On the Setup Capture – Entry Points page, select your entry points for OpenOffice to work. For example the entry points I have chosen are as follows:
- OpenOffice.org Impress.exe,
- OpenOffice.org Math.exe,
- OpenOffice.org Writer.exe,
- OpenOffice.org.exe.
Figure G: Entry Points
5. You now can save and build the project (Figure H). You also have the ability to generate a MSI file to deploy the projects to multiple machines. Basically, when you build the project, it creates an MSI install in addition to the virtualized application files.
Figure H: Setup Capture - Package Settings
6. Open C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware ThinApp\Captures\OpenOffice\bin folder (Figure I) and the following files are available. You can copy these files to a USB stick or a network share. If you createad a MSI, you could copy to a computer and run it to deploy these files.
Figure I: OpenOffice virutalized
7. Next, click on one of the files in Figure I and the virtualized application will run as shown in Figure J and Figure K.
Figure J: Launching virtualized application
Figure K: Word processing program virtualized
And That’s How You ThinApp OpenOffice!
You have successfully virtualized OpenOffice. Now you can begin to virtualize all of your applications. You can download a 60 day trial of Thinapp for evaluations purposes and see how well it works for you.
Anyone else out there using thinapp and want to share their thoughts about the product?