Install VMware Player 4.0.3 in Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)

This brief tutorial is going to show you how to install VMware Player, an alternative to VirtualBox in Ubuntu 12.04.

VMware is a major player in the desktop virtualization business and has a good track record of producing quality software. If you don’t know what VMware Player is, it is a software the lets you run multiple virtual machines or computers from a single host computer. With it, you can install almost all versions of Windows (XP, Vista 7 Server 2008). It will also allows you install most Linux distributions easily.

So, if you’re currently using VirtualBox but you want to try an alternative, then continue below to learn how to install VMware Player in Ubuntu 12.04.

Objectives:

• Install VMware Player 4.0.3 in Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin)
• Enjoy!

To get started, press Ctrl – Alt – T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the commands below to install required packages.

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

Next, go to VMware website and login (or register) to download VMware Player. By default your downloads should be saved in your Downloads folder.

After downloading the file, open terminal and then copy and paste the line below and press Enter to make the file executable.

chmod +x ~/Downloads/VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.i386.bundle

Next, run the commands below to install VMware Player. Follow the wizard to complete the installation.

sudo sh -c ' ~/Downloads/VMware-Player-4.0.3-703057.i386.bundle'

After installing, copy and paste the line below and press Enter to download a patch to fix errors with VMware Player "Unable to start services. See log file /tmp/vmware-root/mdconfig-23331.log for details"

wget http://www.liberiangeek.net/blog/tools/vmware-patch.tar

Then run the commands below to extract the patch.

tar xvf vmware-patch.tar

Finally, run the commands below to install the patch.

sudo ./patch-modules_3.2.0.sh

After patching, open VMware from Dash

Enjoy!