Using Linux under VMWare? Install open-vm-tools

I’ve been a long time user of VMWare ESXi for my baremetal hypervisor needs. In order for it to function at its best, the recommendation has always been to install the VMWare Tools. On Windows this is an exe and a piece of cake. However on Linux it has always been a gamble.

However, a few years back VMWare created the open-vm-tools projects and is slowly starting to direct Linux users to use this package. Unfortunately, that’s not actually mentioned in some versions of ESXi. It has, joyfully, made it’s way into most distros package management suite. My Linux flavor of choice is, of course, Ubuntu where it’s a pre-built package. However it may require the multiverse be enabled.

So next time you install Ubuntu under ESXi, your first (or second) command should be:

$ sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools