VMWare Workstation 17.5 Pro major issues in virtualization of GNU/Linux distributions

[Joseph003]

Hi everyone, lately a particularly annoying problem has been happening to me on VM Ware workstation Pro version 17.5

The problem is the following: suddenly when I create a virtual machine with a GNU/Linux distribution as a "guest" operating system and I go to enable 3D acceleration in the virtual machine settings, suddenly, the virtual machine becomes practically unusable. In particular, I'm noticing this very frustrating problem on GNU/Linux distributions that have GNOME as their desktop environment (or other desktops that require the use of 3D acceleration)

Apparently the offending distros, i.e. which are totally unusable due to this problem, are: Fedora (and derivatives) and Arch Linux (with GNOME as d.e.) (and derivatives of Arch)

What happens, basically, when I enable this 3D acceleration is that the screen of the "guest" machine becomes completely black, I can't access the login screen, even using the mouse is a challenge (in fact it doesn't appear at all but the cursor appears of the host machine). Indeed, VM Ware often crashes, thus having to stop it from the task manager

The host operating system on which I am using VM Ware is Windows 11 (specifications follow below)

On the host machine (Windows) I performed the following steps:

1. Disabled Hyper V (both via bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off and via "Windows features") but the problem persists

2. I have all my host machine's drivers updated to the latest version, but the problem persists

3. Even changing the "hardware compatibility" on VM Ware still using 3D acceleration on these guest machines is impossible (literally)

4. I have disabled "Core Isolation" and other levels of protection from Windows Defender that could affect the performance of VM Ware

5. I have used other virtual machine software (such as Virtual Box, also enabling 3D acceleration and the problem does not exist there)

6. all the tools and in general the "incriminated" distros have updated packages, even VM Ware Tools (services included enabled)

7. Disabling 3D acceleration in the virtual machine settings "solves" the problem but, understand, usability suffers a lot

8. I tried restarting all the VM Ware services from the "Services" feature of Windows but the problem still exists

9. I also tried to insert flags in the .vmx configuration file of the virtual machine such as (mks.enableDX11Renderer = "FALSE" mks.enableGLRenderer = "TRUE") but the problem still exists

HOST PC SPECIFICATIONS

• CPU: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1165G7 (8) @ 2.80 GHz

• GPU: Intel(R) Iris(R) Xe Graphics

• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce MX350 2Gb

• RAM: 16 GB DDR4 2667 MHz

• Disk: M.2 SSD NVMe 512 Gb PCIe 3.0

P.S.

I tried, on a whim, to use VM Ware on another PC and, wonder of wonders, on the other PC everything works normally (with all 3D acceleration enabled)

I also uninstalled and reinstalled VM Ware from scratch on my Host PC, same problem

So I guess the underlying problem lies with my PC but which one and where?

Thank you all so much, I hope I was clear enough, I'll wait for answers 🙂

[Technogeezer]

In the VM, are you using an X11 session or Wayland? 

If X11, try a Wayland session and see if you get the same behavior. 

[StephenAdler]

I'm having the same issues. I started sometime in late November 2023 or early December 2023. It's as if there was an update to the nvidia drivers or a "volkan" update on the fedora guest side to X11. I have a centos stream 8 installed as a guest and that seems to work fine. I have only seen very postings on this problem.

[DanniFlow]

Camara culero, no mames con tus putas soluciones pendejas mijo, alch mejor cierra el ano y no comentes mamadas.
Saludos, El Elementor.

[DanniFlow]

We have the same error, apparently this happens when we install more recent versions of the Linux kernel, I have been testing with distributions with Kernels lower than 6.5 and they all work without problems, but when I install kernels higher than the mentioned version, the machine dies, I hope let them solve the problem soon.

[billydv]

I also recently have similar issues with Linux host (Fedora 39) and both Windows and Linux guests. Host will start to have Vmware workstation window freeze, become unresponsive. Also this causes host inability to reboot. Problem occurs both with X11 and Wayland,  both Nvidia driver 550 and Nouveau.  For now I have uninstalled Workstation because I need the macine stable.