Running a filter on latest ESXi 5.5 Update 2 release for all Guest OSes, we can see that the total number of supported Guest OSes is astounding 231! I know this number is even greater as we probably can not capture every single x86 Guest OS that exists out there today which can run on VMware. To get the complete list of currently supported operating systems for vSphere or any other VMware products, you will want to check the VMware HCL for Guest Operating Systems. Heck, you can even run Windows 3.11 if you really want to as shown by my fellow VMware colleague Chris Colotti.
This also does not include any pre-released operating systems like the recent Apple OS X Yosemite (10.10) Tech Preview. If we just look at vSphere alone, it currently 'lists' 101 supported guest operating systems! (full list below) However, this is actually a tiny subset of what is actually supported on vSphere as new guest OSes are constantly being added to the support matrix.
I am constantly amazed at the number of guest operating systems that is supported on VMware products like VMware vSphere our Enterprise Hypervisor, vCloud Air our public cloud offering which runs on vSphere and our desktop products such as VMware Fusion and Workstation.
