Install VMWare in Ubuntu

I did this a couple of times already and there seems to be no repository with .debs for Ubuntu as today. So here is how to install it with (some) package and dependency support:

1. First download from here. Pick the RPM file, in my case it was named like this: VMware-Player-2.5.2-156735.i386.rpm
2. Convert the RPM to a friendly DEB:

   $ sudo alien VMware-Player-2.5.2-156735.i386.rpm --scripts
   vmware-player_2.5.2-156736_i386.deb generated
   

   
   
3. Install the DEB. Note I had a few warnings:

   $ sudo dpkg -i vmware-player_2.5.2-156736_i386.deb
   Selecting previously deselected package vmware-player.
   (Reading database ... 276046 files and directories currently installed.)
   Unpacking vmware-player (from vmware-player_2.5.2-156736_i386.deb) ...
   Setting up vmware-player (2.5.2-156736) ...
   Extracting VMware Installer...done.
   Installing VMware Installer 1.0
   Copying files...
   Configuring...
   Installing VMware Player 2.5.2
   Copying files...
   Configuring...
   Installing VMware Player 2.5.2
   Copying files...
   Configuring...
   
   Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/tmp/vmis.c32339/install/vmware-installer/python/lib/logging/handlers.py", line 73, in emit
      if self.shouldRollover(record):
    File "/tmp/vmis.c32339/install/vmware-installer/python/lib/logging/handlers.py", line 146, in shouldRollover
      msg = "%s\n" % self.format(record)
    File "/tmp/vmis.c32339/install/vmware-installer/python/lib/logging/__init__.py", line 630, in format
      return fmt.format(record)
    File "/tmp/vmis.c32339/install/vmware-installer/python/lib/logging/__init__.py", line 421, in format
      s = self._fmt % record.__dict__
   UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xe2 in position 62: ordinal not in range(128)
   Installation was successful
   

   
   

I admit I don't know if these errors are critical or not -- let me know if you do. But after installing it this way I am able to use it perfectly (it's been a few days of usage already and I think everything works) .

(The advantage of this method over just downloading a .bin and installing it is that this gets registered in your package manager, and therefore you can uninstall it or cleanly update it later)