For a decent experience with VMware, your system should meet the following criteria:
- 2GHz 64-bit processor
- 4 GB of RAM
- Disk space depends upon the guest operating system you would be installing in the VM
To install VMware Workstation Player in Ubuntu and other Ubuntu-based distributions, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Install required build packages
Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and use the command below to install required build packages and Linux Kernel headers:
sudo apt install build-essentialNext step is to download the VMware Workstation Player.
Don’t worry! It’s free to use for personal use. You don’t have to pay. Just hit the download button here.
You’ll see options to download VMware Workstation Player for both Windows and Linux. No prizes for guessing that you have to download the Linux version here.
Don’t worry if you see a .txt or .bundle file. That actually is the installer.
Step 3: Installing VMware Player
You have to set execute permission on the downloaded installer file.
You can do it graphically as well. Just go to the folder where the file was downloaded. Right click on it and make it executable.
After that, double click on it to run the VMWare installer.
I prefer the command line so I am listing the commands you would need.
I am assuming that it has been downloaded to your Downloads directory. If so, use the command below to make the file executable:
chmod +x ~/Downloads/VMware-Player*
And then run the installation file:
sudo ~/Downloads/VMware-Player*
This will open an installation window.
Step 4: Installing VMware Player
From here, it’s no rocket science. Like any other application, click on next in most of the screen. For your ease, I have listed the screenshots here:
You might also be asked for a license key – do not panic – you do not need one if you want to use the free VMware player for non-commercial purpose. For business use, get the pro edition (where you will get a license key).
And that would be it.
If you want to be able to copy-paste between the real OS (host) and the virtual OS (guest) and share files between them, you should also install VMware Tools on Linux.
I hope it helped you to install VMware Workstation Player in Ubuntu and Linux Mint. I will show you how to configure VMware Player with an OS in another post soon.
