VMWare Fusion is aweful

[Toerktumlare]

So i payed money for this product and it is god awful!

I have installed a ubuntu 20 04 LTS and i want to run i3, and not gnome desktop.

I am running a macbook pro with a retina screen. And VMWare fusion 11.5.6.

The bugs i have encountered so far:

- The mouse trackpad has awful response. Scrolling starts out with me dragging on the trackpad a full cm or two until it actually understands that it should start scrolling. Its like scrolling in mud! If i pull my fingers slow along the trackpad, the vm doesn't scroll at all. I have set that it should permanently not look for gaming. Fix the sensitivity!

- I set the resolution using xrandr in my vm, and i run it full screen. But if i flip to the host (macOS) and back, the host changes the resolution in the guest, so i need to reset the resolution. This also drives me crazy.

- Drag and drop does not work, and there is full of bad information so i have no idea how to fix it. The cd doesnt, mount, but the menu is grayed out and says in grey "reinstall vmware tools" which means they must be installed. When. running ps -ef | grep vmware i see that there is running vmware service. But still no drag n drop, or copy paste is working from host to guest.

None of the documentation i have found works or addresses any of these issues.

Fix your documentation so that it is relevant and easy, so that you actually can find information about how to solve this.

[Mikero]

So i payed money for this product and it is god awful!

Just for the record, we do have a 30 day trial, and you're welcome to request a refund if the product does not meet your standard. Just being transparent about that.

But you're right and no this isn't the experience we expect, and certainly not the one I see on my various systems.

I find Linux VMs tend to run better than Windows, but that could be just me.

I'm also a Gentoo guy, so I know I'm not 'normal' to begin with

Some questions:

What hardware are you using?

Which version of macOS is your host?

Regarding xrandr, I've never used that before personally, but when you invoke 'full screen' the UI sends an event to the Guest advising it of the resolution and it will 'auto-fit'.

If you disable auto-fit, it should allow you to specify any resolution and it will persist.  Is the use case that you need to programmatically change the resolution? For what purpose?

Did you explicitly install VMware tools or did you leave it up to the distro?

Regarding Drag and Drop... Does it work if you're using Gnome? I don't expect that we test exotic window managers that aren't a part of the standard installation, but I'm not sure off the top of my head how much DnD depends on Gnome or KDE to work vs things like Ice or Enlightenment and others.

[Toerktumlare]

okey, i will calm down a bit.

i am running a Macbook Pro.

CPU: 2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7

Memory: 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

GFX: Intel Iris Plus Graphics 655 1536 MB

Host OS: macOS Catalina 10.15.5

It was bought last year in November so quite up to date.

First thing first, the trackpad responsiveness is really bad and i cant figure out why. If i slowly drag two fingers across the trackpad, no scrolling will occur. Not in gnome or in i3. It's like you have to reach a certain speed until the trackpad actually picks it up and starts scrolling. I have googled and search this forum and everywhere and there is nothing about sensitivity or responsiveness.

I3 is one of the most popular tiling managers out there for linux distros, you can either install it ontop of a current distro, or like with for example install manjaro with i3 out of the box. So wouldn't call it extremely exotic.

i3 - improved tiling wm

When i start up my ubuntu vm, i hit the greeter which is in 800x600 so it looks really ugly. If i then login into gnome, it switches to 2560x1600 and all looks crisp. If i logout from gnome, it switches back to 800x600. If i then login into i3 tile manager, it stays at 800x600. If i then set my resolution correctly using xrandr and go full screen in vmware and then flip between the host and guest, it switches my resolution back to 800x600. The recommended way of handling monitors, resolutions etc in i3 is by using xrandr. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xrandr​ so somehow, vmware want it to go 800x600 no exceptions.

When it comes to DnD after some more trying out, it seems to work in GNOME but not working at all in i3. I left everything up to the distro. I wouldnt call i3 that exotic as you can get for example manjaro with i3 out of the box but i wanted a more stable distro than manjaro.

[wila]

Hi,

PMJI,

on the slow trackpad under Catalina make sure that the setting: apple menu -> System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Privacy tab -> Accessibility

has VMware Fusion in the list and checked.

I seem to recall that this kind of slugginess also happens if you assign too many vCPU's to the VM. The rule of thumb is to not assign more than half of the virtual cores in your CPU, IOW, do not assign more than 2 cores to your VM.

re. the automatic screen resize. For the VM -> go to settings -> Display -> Full Screen: set it to "Stretch the virtual machine in the screen"

--

Wil

[Toerktumlare]

The resizing worked, after playing around with the preferences outside the vm, now the greeter is displayed with the correct resolution.

The scrolling sluggishness remains, even though i have set it to only use 2 cpu cores out of 4.

Drag and drop and copy paste from host to guest still doesn't work. Seems like vm-ware-tools is not started, and i cant find any clear official documentation how to start up the tools manually.

[wila]

Hi,

I haven't done any vmware tools troubleshooting on Linux recently, but maybe this still works?

Re: Cannot get Copy-Paste to work for Workstation Player 12

--

Wil

[Toerktumlare]

Here is another update:

after running

$ ps -ef | grep vmware
root         502       1  0 17:15 ?        00:00:00 vmware-vmblock-fuse /run/vmblock-fuse -o rw,subtype=vmware-vmblock,default_permissions,allow_other,dev,suid
thomas      1827    1546  0 17:15 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto vmware

so no vmware tools are running.

Doing as suggested in the linked thread by running:

$ vmware-user
(vmware-user:2589): Gtk-WARNING **: 17:25:51.403: gtk_disable_setlocale() must be called before gtk_init()
$

just produces a warning and an empty line then i am returned back to the terminal prompt if i press enter. Feels to me that the application crashed.

when running ps -ef again results in the same output as above.

[maxtamtam71]

Did you try to setup a lab between kali linux and windows xp with a dedicated network? then vmware Fusion tries to bring you to a psychiatric hospital.

Why Mac users cannot simply have a vmware Workstation ?????????????????????