this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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I've been using VMware Player (free version) for a while now and it's been working fine. Recently I switched to Wayland and VMware's grab input behavior broke. The guest gets most keys correctly but Alt and Super are intercepted by the host. Clicking on the vm also gives me a remote desktop popup on the host prompting to allow remote interaction which gives some weird results both on the host and guest. Apparently this is a known issue with gnome(?) and the only workaround is to add Super to any shortcut (eg. Super+Alt+Tab) but this obviously doesn't work for all shortcuts.

I'm using Gnome on Fedora and Ubuntu and they seem to have the same behavior (but no remote desktop popup on Ubuntu). Both work fine on X11. I've also tested both VMware player 16 and 17.

So if anyone is using VMware on Wayland, do you know of a combination that works? Does it work on KDE? Should I just switch to Virtualbox? I'd really rather keep Wayland if possible.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Switch to KVM based virtualization such as gnome boxes or virtual manager

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

What do you like about GNOME Boxes?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

I've a very bad experience with GNOME boxes, both VMware and VirtualBox seem to outperform the thing and work better (drag and drop and resolution scaling, actual GPU acceleration).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

It is simpler and runs as a local user

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

This. It is free, and good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The best in the industry

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I had to switch the computer where I needed VMware to an Xorg session. 🥹

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Sadly that means the second screen not working properly

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Fractional scaling is also a bit subpar.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

virt-manager for the win!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Better question is who is using VMware at all. QEMU+virt-manager on top.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, I was forced to use it for a project and then just stuck with it for its simplicity

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

It's got really good hardware graphics acceleration.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (3 children)

If you don't need many features it's easier to quickly set up and create a vm than VirtualBox. Well until now anyway. I haven't tried the other alternatives mentioned here, they might be better in that aspect too.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

If you want simple, GNOME Boxes is hard to beat.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Virtual box is slow and requires kernel modules just like VMware. Seems easier to use something native.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Specifically for Windows vms without a GPU passed to it, VMware tends to do a way better job at least in my testing

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah, Windows on KVM without GPU acceleration is not ideal. Also setting up a VM with all the bells and whistles like a shared folder, USB, printing is still easier on VMware than virt-manager. I've recently switched all my Windows VMs from VMware to KVM/virt-manager.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If you install the virtio drivers KVM based virtualization it will work way better. You can even copy and paste

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I had the same issue and was unable to find a solution.

I'd say switch to gnome-boxes or virt-managerif possible - they don't have this issue with Wayland and perform better than VMWare / Virtual Box anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Interesting, I didn't know about virt-manager. I might try one of those, thanks for the suggestion.