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VMware tools allow us to run multiple operating systems on a single machine, providing virtualization. We use VMWare tools to improve the performance of virtual machines.

VMware tools provide features like faster graphics performance, shared folders, shared clipboard, drag and drop operations, etc. We can install VMware in Ubuntu using Open VM Tools and VMware Tools ISO files.

We can install VMware Tools on the Ubuntu guest account by installing the Open VM Tools package from the Ubuntu repository.

We execute the following command to install VMware using Open VM Tools.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools

It first updates the repository and then downloads the packages from the updated repository open-vm-tools.

However, if we are using Ubuntu desktop, we should execute the following command to install open-vm-toolsthe package.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install open-vm-tools-desktop

Suppose there is a newer open-vm-toolspackage in the repository, in this case, we can update open-vm-toolsthe package. In this case, we can use the following command to update open-vm-toolsthe existing version of the package.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install VMware using the VMware Tools ISO file

We can also install VMware using the image ISO file located on the host. We perform the following steps in order to install VMware using the VMware Tools ISO file

1. Open VMware Workstation, Fusion, or Player and start the Ubuntu guest virtual machine.
2. Click on Virtual Machine, then click on Install VMware Tools from the VMware menu. If we use VMWare player, it will prompt us to download VMWare Tools.
3. Create a new directory as the mount point for the CD-ROM drive, and then mount the ISO file using the command.

   $ sudo mkdir -p /mnt/cdrom
   $ sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
   

4. Change to the directory created in the previous step and use the command to extract the VMwareTools file that contains the VMware Tools installer.

   $ cd /mnt/cdrom
   $ sudo tar xf VMwareTools-*.tar.gz -C /tmp
   

5. Now run the vmware-install.pl script to install VMware Tools using the command.

   $ sudo /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl -d
   

   Here, -dthe installer will use the default options.
6. Finally, to observe the changes, we restart the Ubuntu guest using the command.

   $ sudo shutdown -r now