Advice, Tips, and Tricks

Guest Installation

VMware can run installation files (ISOs) directly as virtual discs, so there is no need to burn them to an installation medium such as a disc or USB data stick.

The process to install any Guest operating system - including Manjaro - is exactly the same as if actually installing for real on your computer.

VMware Tools

Note

Manjaro will already have open-vm-tools pre-installed, so there is no need to add it yourself.

The Open Virtual Machine Tools (open-vm-tools) are the open source implementation of VMware Tools. They are special software packages designed to improve the performance and usability of the guest operating systems. They are installed within the Guest operating system itself, and most notably result in enhancing the display resolution, as well as enabling much better control over the mouse. As such, two tell-tale signs that they have not been installed in a Guest are that the display will not scale to the size of the display window (i.e. it will be necessary to scroll around to see the whole screen), and the mouse may be quite hard to control.

Guest Display

It will be necessary to activate the Enable 3D acceleration box in order to allow for some desktop effects (such as transparency) to be shown. This can be undertaken by going into the settings menu, and then selecting the Display section.

Cut and Paste

If cut and paste does not work, you may need to install gtkmm and re-boot. vmware-user-suid-wrapper depends on gtkmm, but it's not a dependency of the package. See: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/43159

General

Don't be afraid to take risks, to experiment, and to have fun with Guest operating systems. The worst that can happen is that they will have to be re-installed!