How to Install VMware Tools on Ubuntu 18.04

After installing Ubuntu on VMware, First thing you need to do is to install VMware Tools. VMware Tools is a set of utilities that improves the performance of the virtual machine and unlocks additional features in the guest operating system that are not enabled by default.

Two different VMware tools package available for Ubuntu, one is open vm tools, second one is the VMware Tools package that ships with VMware product as an ISO image.

The recommended package for Ubuntu 18 is open vm tools. To install open-vm-tools on Ubuntu 18.04, Open the terminal and execute:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools

If you are using Ubuntu 18.04 desktop, install the open-vm-tools-desktop as well.

sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

Install VMware Tools from ISO image

VMware itself recommends open-vm-tools for Ubuntu. But for some reason, if you want to install the VMware Tools package that ships with VMware, perform the following steps:

Right click on the Virtual machine and click “Install VMware Tools..”.
Open the terminal and mount the ISO image to the /mnt directory:
```
sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/
```
Move into the /mnt and extract the VMware Tools package to the /tmp directory:
```
cd /mnt/
sudo tar -zxvf VMwareTools-10.2.5-8068393.tar.gz -C /tmp/
```
Move into the /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/ and execute the vmware-install.pl script:
```
cd /tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/
sudo ./vmware-install.pl
```
Respond to the configuration questions on the screen appropriately.

Note that, you might need to restart your Ubuntu virtual machine, after the VMware Tools installation has completed.

By installing VM Tools you enable additional features that are not enabled by default, These features includes: Efficient memory management, correct screen resolution, better console display, improves mouse movement, cut and paste, drag and drop functionality, time synchronization and etc.