Linux vmware unity mode
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thenightfly
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is there any solution to get Unity mode work on Linux — Gnome systems?|
I’m trying to get this thing work on Centos7 | VmWare W. 12 | Gnome Shell 3.8.4
Has anybody some idea/instruction?TN
thenightfly
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Answer —->> VmWare version 11 works fine
I hopw Vm will put back this feature in future relases.
wila
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I’m sorry to inform you that unity has been completely removed for Linux guests as well as Linux hosts.
| Author of Vimalin. The virtual machine Backup app for VMware Fusion, VMware Workstation and Player |
| More info at vimalin.com | Twitter @wilva
thenightfly
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Hi wila,
thank you for the answer,
This is very saddening and a shame for VmWare to deprive the Linux community.
Which -older- version support this function still?
thenightfly
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Answer —->> VmWare version 11 works fine
I hopw Vm will put back this feature in future relases.
Bounder35H
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I really miss unity mode. I liked it so much that I was willing to suffer Gnome 3 for its sake (Unity mode doesn’t work in Unity (the Ubuntu one) at all; gotta love that namespace collission
Soooo, as long as we’re wishing for stuff, I’m going to ask for a pony and say I not only would like Unity Mode back, but I’d like to have it work in Unity
I used to have Workstation 10 but had to upgrade to 12 to make something in particular work. Going back is not an option, but I believe I could go down to 11 to get Unity, and the other stuff would probably all work (haven’t tested it yet, though). Would anyone happen to know if my Workstation 12 license allows me to downgrade to Workstation 11?
Linux vmware unity mode
You can switch virtual machines that have Windows XP or later guest operating systems to Unity mode to display applications directly on the host system desktop.
In Unity mode, virtual machine applications appear on the host system desktop, you can use the virtual machine Start or Applications menu from the host system, and the virtual machine console view is hidden. Items for open virtual machine applications appear on the host system taskbar in the same way as open host applications.
On host system and virtual machine applications that are displayed in Unity mode, you can use keyboard shortcuts to copy, cut, and paste images, plain text, formatted text, and email attachments between applications. You can also drag and drop and copy and paste files between the host system and the guest operating system.
If you save a file or attempt to open a file from an application in Unity mode, the file system you see is the file system inside the virtual machine. You cannot open a file from the host operating system or save a file to the host operating system.
For some guest operating systems, application windows in Unity mode can appear only on the monitor that is set as the primary display when you have multiple monitors. If the host and guest operating systems are Windows XP or later, the application windows can appear on additional monitors.
Unity mode is not available in full screen mode on Windows.
Prerequisites
- Verify that the latest version of VMware Tools is installed in the guest operating system.
- Verify that the guest operating system is Windows XP or later.
- Power on the virtual machine.
- If you are entering Unity mode, open applications in the virtual machine to use in Unity mode.
Procedure
The console view in the Workstation Pro window is hidden, and open applications appear in application windows on the host system desktop. A check mark appears next to Unity in the View menu.
VMWare Unity Mode with Ubuntu 12.10
This is a very difficult thing to search for, and find an answer to because of the unfortunate choice VMWare and Ubuntu both having something called «Unity». My host operating system is Windows 7 — 64 bit, running VMWare Workstation 9.0.1. I have a virtual machine running Ubuntu 12.10 — 64 bit. When I attempt to put VMWare in «Unity mode», I get the following message:
The virtual machine cannot enter Unity mode because: - Unity is not supported on the guest operating system. From the VMWare site, there is nothing listed that says that Ubuntu is not supported for this. and I have installed the latest vmware-tools on the guest operating system. It seems like a lot of people have had this issue, but I haven’t seen a good resolution to it yet. Does anyone know how to get Unity mode working with Ubuntu?
4 Answers 4
I had the same problem. I thought it is just Ubuntu 12.10, so I setup 12.04 in Vmware Workstation 9 and had the same result. You’re right, it’s hard to find the solution for this. The problem is Unity Desktop (in Ubuntu), so I switched to gnome3.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome3-team/gnome3
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
Log out and click the circle to change between desktop environment
Thanks. Interesting, I tried with the three different Gnome modes and only one behaved as I would like. The one labeled «Gnome» went into Unity, but took over all my monitors, even for one app. Gnome Classic wouldn’t go into Unity mode at all. Gnome Classic — No Effects worked as I expected.
I’ve installed several flavors of Ubuntu on virtual machines, using both VMware Player and Virtualbox, and Vincent’s answer is absolutely correct. VMware hates the Ubuntu desktop called Unity (unfortunately, as mentioned before, this shares a name with VMware’s own Unity Mode). This is just one more reason to avoid Ubuntu’s proprietary desktop.
My suggestion, is you MUST use Ubuntu, try Xubuntu, which uses the XFCE desktop, and is fully compatible with both VMware’s Unity Mode, and Virtualbox’s Seamless Mode. As an added bonus, XFCE is lighter, faster, offers a better workflow, and (IMO) prettier that Unity Desktop, which I avoid like the plague.
Another option, which may be even better than using XFCE, is to use a more stable distribution that utilizes the older Gnome 2 desktop. An excellent choice for this is CentOS, which is a fully RedHat compatible distribution. It works perfectly with VMware. It is not suitable for those that want the newest, prettiest, most cutting edge software (i.e. Pipelight, newer versions of LibreOffice, etc. ) but if you want a rock solid development, programming platform that is VERY bug free it would work very well.
Last thought, Linux Mint’s MATE desktop is simply a Gnome 2 fork, so would probably offer an excellent alternative for those who need cutting edge software and VM compatibility. It also has the advantage of being based on Ubuntu, so there would be no need to adjust to the idiosyncrasies of a new Linux distro.
Anyhow, that is altogether too much info, but it’s late, and I can’t sleep. I hope this was marginally helpful.
Notes of a Programmer
Some users want to run Linux desktop guests «seamlessly» within host operating systems, for which, VMWare Hypervisors provides a functionality called VMware «Unity» mode.
This post is about how we can enable the Unity mode on Linux desktop guests running Ubuntu 16.04, well, if you are willing to settle on an older version of WMware Workstation or Player.
In fact, it becomes difficult to enable the «Unity» mode for Linux guests. If you visit my older post on enabling VMware Unity mode on Ubuntu 14.04, you can see many have encountered difficulties, myself included. In particular, it is getting more difficult to enable the Unity mode on recent releases of desktop editions of Linux distributions. In my opinion, the difficulties come form the following three sources,
- Apparently, VMWare has recently dropped the support of Unity mode for Linux guests. You can infer this by comparing the documentation of VMware Workstation Player 12 with that of the previous version of the player, the VMware Player 7. VMware’s Workstation Player 12 documentation now states,
»
Use Unity Mode
You can switch virtual machines that have Windows XP or later guest operating systems to Unity mode to display applications directly on the host system desktop.
«
»
Use Unity Mode
You can switch virtual machines that have Linux or Windows 2000 or later guest operating systems to Unity mode to display applications directly on the host system desktop.
«
It is clearly that Linux support has been dropped.
sudo apt-get install gnome-flashback gnome-session-flashback 
7 comments:
I was running xubuntu 14.04 with vmware workstation, which was working like a charm with unity mode, vmware auto-installing all, including the vmware tools, having unity support right after a fresh install without having to do anything at all.
However, 14.04 LTS support just ran out recently.
So i tried 16.04.1 xubuntu but couldn’t get unity to work with the auto-install vmware does. Included in the auto-install were the open-vm-tools packages it seemed.
I removed them and tried to install the original vmware tools with no success of getting unity to work still.
So i tried a manual install, by choosing «I will install the operating system later.» when creating a new virtual machine.
When i finally finished the fresh xubuntu 16.04.1 installation, i checked if open-vm-tools were installed. They were not.
So i went on to install the vmware tools and voila, after a reboot, unity worked flawlessly.
Drag and dropping files onto the desktop also works (most of the times). Dragging and dropping into my home folder which worked in 14.04, does not seem to work with my current solution.
Copy and paste of test works fine too.
I used the latest workstation version(pre 12.x) 11.1.4.
Note that i have no clue of why it works and if it will or not break later when automatic software updates are used.
No clue why even when removing open-vm-tool packages and installing vmware-tools afterwards does not work, but it works if open-vm-tools were not installed.
Also, i did not have to use metacity to get this to work. It works just fine with xubuntu’s default.
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