When I was running Workstation 9.0 that didn't support Debian 7.x I was able to get 3D support working by jumping through some hoops that are easily found through a google search (including one on this very forum Is there a current guide to enabling 3D Acceleration in Debian Guests?), however, try as I might I am unable to get the same working under Workstation 11.0 that does officially support Debian 7.x.
If I follow the documented steps I get to a point where I can execute the following command:
gnome-shell --replace
And Gnome3 will load, however, it's less than stable, actually quite unusable, whereas it worked flawlessly in WS9.
I'm assuming that the xserver-xorg-video-vmware driver just doesn't work well with WS11 yet, but that's based on not very much Linux experience (maybe the driver is not the issue?), so I am interested in the thoughts of others. For now I have abandoned this dream.
Cheers.
Helps to read release notes. I just noticed this when reading the 11.1 release notes.
3D rendering is not available in some guest operating systems if you use virtual hardware version 11
If you upgrade a virtual machine from virtual hardware version 10 to 11, you might lose 3D functionality in the virtual machine.
Workaround: For Windows guest operating systems, upgrade VMware Tools to the latest version, which is included with Workstation 11. For Linux guests, only the following distributions are currently supported for virtual hardware version 11:
For other Linux distributions and versions, if you plan to use 3D functionality, downgrade the virtual hardware version to 10.
So I downgraded my virtual hardware to 10, repeated the hoop jumps to re-build the xserver-xorg-video-vmware guy (Debian Wheezy) and now I'm all set.
I did notice a little while back that Jessie appears to work off the bat with Hardware version 11, but there is currently another unresolved issue there that makes using Jessie in VMware not worth the effort unless you are willing to cherry pick a few upstream fixes and jump through more hoops.
Helps to read release notes. I just noticed this when reading the 11.1 release notes.
3D rendering is not available in some guest operating systems if you use virtual hardware version 11
If you upgrade a virtual machine from virtual hardware version 10 to 11, you might lose 3D functionality in the virtual machine.
Workaround: For Windows guest operating systems, upgrade VMware Tools to the latest version, which is included with Workstation 11. For Linux guests, only the following distributions are currently supported for virtual hardware version 11:
For other Linux distributions and versions, if you plan to use 3D functionality, downgrade the virtual hardware version to 10.
So I downgraded my virtual hardware to 10, repeated the hoop jumps to re-build the xserver-xorg-video-vmware guy (Debian Wheezy) and now I'm all set.
I did notice a little while back that Jessie appears to work off the bat with Hardware version 11, but there is currently another unresolved issue there that makes using Jessie in VMware not worth the effort unless you are willing to cherry pick a few upstream fixes and jump through more hoops.