When comparing QEMU vs VMWare Workstation, the Slant community recommends QEMU for most people. In the question“What are the best virtual machines for Ubuntu?” QEMU is ranked 3rd while VMWare Workstation is ranked 4th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Near-native performance
Pro Free and open source
QEMU is available for free with source code available here.
Pro Can do snapshots
QEMU is capable of taking whole-system snapshots and writing them to a backing file.
Pro Works with Vagrant
Works with Vagrant, an awesome tool for managing and deploying virtual machine images.
Pro High-availability
There is very little to no downtime of the Virtual desktops that are hosted in a datacenter.
Pro Can do snapshots
Workstation is capable of taking whole-system snapshots and writing them to a backing file.
Pro Windows / Linux host
Can be installed on Windows and Linux systems.
Cons
Con No official GUI
Con No snapshotting support in the free version
Con Pro version is overpriced
The pro version which has snapshot support is ridiculously overpriced. What's worse, major releases require a brand new license, but generally don't add much more functionality.
Con Horrible user interface
Too often you get "vm is used by another user" or "can't revert to snapshot" for whatever reasons without simple solutions. In most cases, it just throws knowledge base links to you. Not even clickable. Way overpriced.