Install VMWare Tools on Ubuntu 8.04

Hello out there in Ubuntu land! I thought I would write a tip today on how to install VMWare tools on Ubuntu 8.04. The reason I am writing is it occurs to me that not everyone knows how to do this. I had a former colleague write me and tell me that Bauer-Power shows up in a lot of his Ubuntu searches. He was looking for instructions on how to install VMWare tools, but couldn't find anything.

Actually, it is pretty easy. Like most binary packages, you need to have two things installed first, Linux Headers, and the Build Essentials package. Before trying to install VMWare tools run the following from command line:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Then run

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

After that is finished, click on the VM menu, and select Install VMWare Tools. When you click that, Ubuntu will mount a virtual CD. Browse the CD and extract the VMWare tools tar ball to your desktop. In the terminal, cd into that newly extracted directory and run the following:

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Accept all defaults, and you are set just reboot once. Now keep in mind that VMWare tools on Ubuntu doesn't really act the same way as it does on a Windows VM. There will be no icon in the tray, or anything like that. It basically runs transparently. It also give some good benefits like:

• Improved video compatibility & performance
• Mouse synchronization with the host operating system so that you don't have to keep releasing your mouse from the guest to go back to the host
• Improved network compatibility & performance
• Copy and paste between the host and guest

Have you had any problems installing VMWare tools on Ubuntu or any other Linux platform? Did you find a fix? Hit me up in the comments.