which produces more?

VMWare Server with Ubuntu 64-bit Virtual Machines
or VMWare player with knotfreds
just woundering if there is any difference

I believe notfreds produces slightly more. Slightly less overhead.

I've personally begun to like the combo of VMWare Player with a home baked Ubuntu VM... so a little mixture of both.

notfred's is the quickest way to get setup and Folding on Linux SMP... but it lacks flexibility. I also feel VMWare Server has a bit more overhead than does Player.

However, unless one is going to "hack" their way into building a custom VM with Player (it can be done) then one needs at least one machine installed with Server to build the VM. It can then be copied to another box where Player is installed and then run from there.

I just moved a rig from Server to Player yesterday and it looks like it's picked up ~100ppd per VM. I also think that's going to be about the maximum difference between any of these solutions... not much in the grand scheme of things... I'd stick with whatever works best for you from a maintainability standpoint.

Do you think not installing a x11/gui (gnome, kde ect) reduces the overhead enough to increase ppd? I built my vm's without a gui and doing everything CLI. Seems like linux is light weight and fast until you throw a x11 desktop on it, then its starts getting a little windows'ish.

I might try out player. I though server would be better but the services and tomcat chew up a lot of mem (not everything needs to be web based people!).