Just set up vmplayer under a new partition of 14.04 LTS Ubuntu (host) and Win 10 (guest). Working fine now.
Not much luck with Linuxmint 17.1 though. Running Win 10 as guest in Virtualbox seems to be slow even with SSD.
Thanks you guys for the valuable input to this newbie
Daniel
Hi there
Linux Mint I found had some issues with VMware and W10 as GUEST.
If you are prepared to do a little work CENTOS 7 works perfectly with both vmplayer rel 6 and 7. CENTOS 7 is based to be the free edition of RED HAT server 7 (and Red Hat is now managing CENTOS too) - so you get a really enterprise strength version of Linux. About 80 - 90 % of the worlds servers run on Red Hat.
You will need to add the repositories for multi-media (VLC) and set up your desktop GUI - I use KDE so a little bit more work but really worth it in the long run. It's possibly not quite so leading edge as Linux Mint but IMO that's an advantage and it has long term support till 2023,. I used to be an OPENSUSE user but have totally switched to CENTOS now - and not sorry I did.
The extra repositories in CENTOS are called EPEL - plenty of documentation though so it's not difficult. Just a tiny smidgen of extra work rather than straight out of the box but IMO well worth the effort.
Ensure when installing vmware on Linux that you are using the CORRECT kernel headers whatever Linux system you are running - get the name of the kernel you are using with the command (as root / sudo) uname -r. If you have the wrong kernel headers VMware won't start properly.
UNITY mode though in W10 and workstation 11 or vmplayer 7 still is an issue --it sort of works - same if using a WINDOWS HOST too.
Remember also it's easy to go back a release of VMware simply as root /usr/bin/VMware-installer -u then product name e.g VMWare-workstation or whatever. at the popup screen choose delete configuration too so you can re-install again from scratch the previous version.
If going BACK a release remember to UNINSTALL VMware tools on the GUEST.
Note also depending on your Linux distro -- remove package open vmware tools - you don't need it any more and it can hose up the VMware tools installation on your Guest. Set Guest USB to use USB2 if problems with USB devices (removing / recognizing).
Finally don't forget you CAN get 3D to work as well as hardware graphics acceleration - install packages libtxc_dxtn (enables S3TC) and driconf. (Driconf doesn't exist on centos but needed on Ubuntu).
In the config file add mks.enable3d="TRUE" and mks.gl.allowBlacklistedDrivers="TRUE"
make sure that these lines are not duplicated - you might have one of these already in the config. If you do then the VM won't start (config error !!).
Cheers
jimbo
Jimbo, Cemtos sounds like work. What do you think is the problem with Mint and VMware Player.
CentOs is no more work to install than Mint, Ubuntu or any other popular distro. You download the ISO and click on install. It tends to be a little more stable (or slow to update depending how you look at it) as updates take longer to arrive (and thus be better tested by other people) than Fedora or some other distributions that is all.
You can run VMWare on any linux. I use VirtualBox personally as VMWare is not free on OSX host.
This is my set up
1. Ubuntu 14.01 (host) Win 7 & Win 10 (guest) works well even with harddrive (VMPlayer)
2. Linuxmint (host) with Win 7 & Win 10 (guest) works slow with SSD (Virtualbox). Still have problem installing VMplayer. Still trying.
I need to run Window mainly for 2 software need. 1st is Acrobat Professional and the Browser for US Netflix . The new Ubuntu/Chrome can view Netflix now. So I have only occasional need to use Acrobat Pro. That is about it
Daniel
Hi there.
Linuxmint 17 tends to have problems with VMware currently it seems - if it works on Ubuntu and you are happy with that and it works then stick to it. I didn't like the direction Ubuntu was going with Canonical etc so abandoned it.
Centos is slightly more work as you have to add things like a GUI and multi-media such as VLC and LIBDVDCSS afterwards as they aren't straight out of the box like some other distros. Also to get NTFS mounts to work you have to install package ntfs-3g from the EPEL. (Extra repository).
It's not hard but it's slightly more work for people who are used to clicking install and expecting everything to work straight out of the box. For example to get my audio streamer to work (the old Logitech squeezebox system - I've a number of Logitech Internet radios and squeezebox receivers (which also handle FLAC unlike most of these streamers) around the house I had to install some extra PERL modules and create a symbolic link. On another distro just installing the package itself would have worked).
I'm happy using an Enterprise strength distro backed by Red Hat - stability is what I want rather than absolute leading edge - but that's what is great about Linux - plenty of choice out there.
Cheers
jimbo
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