Yeah, it took me a while to figure out how to
shrink my .vmdk's. I describe the steps at
http://kegel.com/linux/jeos-vmware-player-howto.html
but in short, it's
1. delete unneeded files (and I show which ones)
2. copy to a fresh filesystem (a bit more effective
than the zero copy trick you link to)
3. compress with 7zip (yeah, I know, it's a wierd tool, but it compresses .vmdk's much better than
anything else I've tried).
My vanilla jeos gutsy image is down to 80MB now! »
Thanks. Here's my little contribution,
a recipe for using VMWare Player to create
a Jeos virtual machine that can run in VMWare
Player:
http://kegel.com/linux/jeos-vmware-player-howto.html
You wouldn't think one would need such a recipe,
but the experience was painful; there are
four or five gotchas, all of which I document.
Compressing the resulting vmware image with p7zip
produces a 94MB download, which isn't too shabby. »