Host: Windows 7 x64
Software: Workstation 8.0.2
Guests: Ubuntu 12.04, Kubutu 12.04, Xubuntu 12.04 (VMware Tools installed in all 3)
I've been trying out the new Ubuntu flavors with Workstation and seem to having a weird issue with the mouse inside the guests. It's a bit difficult to explain, so bear with me.
When I move the mouse slowly in a certain direction inside the guest, Workstation seems to be telling the guest that my mouse is moving back and forth (for example, if I move the mouse down 5 pixels, it appears that the guest is seeing that the mouse moves 5 pixels down, then maybe 3 pixels back up, then 2 pixels back down to come to its final resting place).
This issue is most apparant with menus. When you drop down a menu and move your mouse over the menu items, the currently selected menu items is highlighted. In my Linux guests, if I bring up a menu and slowly move my mouse downward between two menu items, the highlight will change from the top menu item to the bottom one momentarily, then change back (all the while I am not moving my mouse upward), then change it back to the bottom one.
A somewhat related issue is if I click repeatedly in one area multiple times without moving the mouse, after 6-7 clicks the guest will stop recognizing the mouse clicks. For example, if you click the Kubuntu "Start" button or Xubuntu's "Applications" button 6-7 times without moving the mouse, each time will open the menu and then close it after the next click. But after 6-7 times, suddently clicking no longer registers in the guest. In fact, the guest won't even highlight the button (as it would if it thought the mouse was over it). If I move the mouse slightly inside the guest, suddently it recognizes the mouse again.
Another related issue is moving windows inside the guest. This happens on both Gnome 3, KDE, and XFCE (the three guests I mentioned above). If you click and drag a window around at normal speed, it seems very smooth. But if you click and drag slowly, the window will sort of jump around a bit. For example, if you drag the window down a tiny bit, the guest will think you moved it down a bit, then to the right a bit, then maybe to the left, etc... The window ends up where it should go, but its very jittery.
I have tried to change the Input grabbing priority to High, change the "Gaming mode" to both Always and Never, and change the Guest OS type. The only thing that made a difference was changing the Guest OS type to "Windows" on my Linux guest. In that case, the mouse was not enhanced at all (even with VMware tools installed, my mouse was very laggy and could not escape the window unless I hit Ctrl+Alt. However, the mouse did not exhibit the "small snapping" but I described above.
Could someone with Workstation and Ubuntu 12.04 try to reproduce this issue? Simply open up the applications menu and slowly move your mouse down and up between them. After a few attempts, you should notice a situation where the highlight jumps back and forth between the menu items a few times, even though you aren't moving your mouse back and forth. Either that or just try clicking a button several times inside a Ubuntu guest without moving the mouse and let me know if the guest stops registering the clicks after a while. Or maybe drag a window around very slowly and see if it seems smooth or jittery.
These issues may seem minimal, but they make using the guests pretty annoying. For example, it's difficult to target the bottom right corner of a guest window to resize it, because the guest is seeing the mouse move around more than it appears on my host.
Thanks!
