So, getting reliable results would be case by case and should be repeated with many different parameters - a huge job.
Anyway, Microsoft announcement that Win 11 is 2.3 faster than Win 10 - is evidently complete nonsense. 3 year old computers - if that is the change interval of the computer - SHOULD be about 2.3 times faster without changing OS.
Win 10 cannot be recommended, if you need Internet connection, because its support starts to end and is perhaps low priority anyways. Running VM in NAT, in a subnet, helps somewhat. Obviously, there are many ways to protect your Win 10 VM.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 05, 2025 05:42 AM
From: Tester man
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
Thanks to you all for creative thinking and attempts to help out.
I didn't know there was something called open vmware tools. where to download those? Will those solve VGA driver incompatibility issues like mine? You would expect broadcom to solve that in their supplied tools no? Your technical information is very interesting and indeed I could try a server os or windows 11 home. As you confirm windows 11 is not not easy. Would windows 10 home run better? I prefer windows enterprise versions (coming also with pro options) because they allow me to block telemetry and other microsoft spy functions in group policies or regedit. However, my use of windows guests is only limited. I could live without advanced options. For now, I will accept no vmware tools VGA and experiment with open vmware tools on a new guest machine.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 03, 2025 10:18 AM
From: Morc001
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
First of all I tried to reply to Tester man's message, but the forum does not indicate after you post which post is was a response to.
VMWare Tools is about host-guest integration package. I always install it. Besides display resolution auto change in guest, focus grabbing/release did not work without it. Windows 11 must have some drivers in it by default as some of these featuers work even in a bare Windows 11 guest. Guest performance depends, in my opinion, on drivers installed by the Tools package, or inlcuded in the kernel. A virtual hardwave (patavirt SCSI, vmnet Ethernet) must be faster than an emulated storage or network adapter.
Secondly Tester man wrote that he saw the 150% in the top command, which is a Linux command, and on Linux the CPU usage is shown differently to Windows. On Windows 100% CPU means all cores are at 100%, while on Linux 100% means on core is running at 100% or the core utuliized by the process add up to 100% utilization, equivalent of 100% on 1 CPU core. This is not dependent on the distro or kernel version, this has always worked like this as far as I know.
Pro has more features enabled by default, that's why Home is more lightweight, although the difference may not be big/noticable. Server, I thought, has more features enabled than Home, maybe not more, than Pro. The difference in install size may not be indicative of the difference in service/features running.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 03, 2025 05:02 AM
From: RaSystemlord
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
Thanks for the discussion and clarifications.
1.
Yes, I forgot to mention the Open-tools for Linux. They have been recommended here over VMware versions.
2.
Copy/paste works without those Tools. I was referring also to the nick "tester man" - in testing you might not need them. However, whether drag or copy/paste ACTUALLY works and how it works, depends on many things with Tools or no-Tools.
In some versions, VMware windows-sizing "automatic-controls", did not work without Tools. I don't remember what the host/guest -combination was ... I had to play with the actual resolution of the VM to get things done.
If Tools really have a meaning in terms of CPU performance, I would like to hear a comment on that.
3.
In my Win 11 case - Task Manager shows the CPU load in terms of the Cores that you got to the VM. With 4 Cores in VM, you can load it 100%, but with 24 cores on Host the load is nowhere near 100%. But it depends - if you get Host swapping/paging, then you DO put load on Host beyond that. Well, if you can get it to swap - nowadays VMware does not allow all kinds of memory allocations for the Guest.
So, with Windows CPU load seems to be OK - I don't know what a certain version of Linux shows.
4.
There is no such thing as "bloated-Windows-server-by default". It is also much smaller on disk.
Server does not have much of anything by default - you need to give it Roles and thus you have a good control for it.
Server with capabilities for/with SQL Server, Domain Controller, DNS, DHCP, IIS, File Server - seems a lot lighter than Windows 11 Pro by default. (With the above I did not mean that SQL Server would have been installed and running, just capabilities for installing and running it). None of the above are there by default and you probably only need the Role for File Services.
5.
As for Home and Pro ... there may be a good point there.
I'm always using Pro, because of professional work, without checking what the requirement is now. However, I got performance results just yesterday that a Win Pro 11 VM seems to run quicker when some (complicated in terms of Windows architecture) applications are uninstalled. I mean, those applications were just sitting there without doing anything, but STILL slowing down the system considerably.
I guess Windows 11 Pro development has achieved now the same thing as with XP - which got slower and slower with EVERY application that was installed there. Some of my collegues re-installed Windows XP every 6 months because of that. Some said that it was because of Registry handling which was extremely slow. In Vista/Windows 7 that was corrected. Microsoft has the tendency of introducing old bugs in new versions and this might be it.
Too burdensome to test, but Home could be actually faster because of the thing mentioned above.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 03, 2025 04:01 AM
From: Gabor Kormos
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
On Linux, 100% CPU usage means 1 core is utilized to 100%. If you have 12 cores, CPU utilization can be 1200% if all cores are maxed out by a single process. Try some CPU stress test utility to see, like Prime95. 100% usage has nothing to do with CPU frequencies.
Also VMWare Tools was never and will never be for the host on any kind of host operating system. It's for the guests to (better) support the virtual hardware VMWare is presenting to the guests, and host-guest integration, like copy-paste. VMWare provided the tools themselves, but on Linux now you have open-vm-tools, which is a collections of support drivers/tools not only for VMWare but XEN and QEMU as well if I'm not mistaken.
Use a Home version of Windows in my opinion, as that has less features enabled, than Pro. Servers may also be bloated out of the box. If you don't care about updating, you could try something like Tiny Windows or some script/application that stips out unnecessary services/applications.
Original Message:
Sent: Jul 02, 2025 06:20 AM
From: Tester man
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
Hi RaSystemlord, thanks for taking time to write this extended and informing answer in attempt to help.
I will consider. Some questions left behind; if vmware-tools have no function, why are they supplied by broadcom on vmware linux hosts? I assumed a correct working vmware tools vga driver could decrease the cpu usage on the host system. In fact this was the most important reason to use it.
Also 3d graphics could improve, however, I had no plans for photoshop, autocad, games stuff like that. I can live without it. For testing I ran a 15 year old game on a windows 10 guest, in top (shell application called top) CPU rose to 150% , I don'r know how that is possible, but it said 150%...) I chose 2 cpu's and 12 cores in the vmware host options and vinked on simulation for VT-x . The response of the guest is good, just the laptop need to work for graphics. For office like applicstions the CPU's keeps with 10%.
Some other questions rose:
-What is the best lite windows version for vmware guests?
Revisit tests? Why would I do that? On a debian system I have found this VGA criver corrputed the gnome desktop. Same for Popos and Fedora.
I tried on this debian system kernel 11.x .Same situation with the vmware tools VGA driver, this kernel should be supported, but for me it didn't.
It seems an incompatibility at a third party side (Broadcom). I decided to try out fedora. And gave up on the vga driver thing.
SO ,far it works. There is no solution, only a workaround like you do in your machines.
Original Message:
Sent: Jun 28, 2025 02:12 PM
From: RaSystemlord
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
It's possible that I haven't hit exactly the same cases, but ...
1.
I have never fiddled with VGA drivers. And I don't bother installing VMware Tools in quick tests, because they are not really needed for most things. I have a large number of VMs under Win 10. I have heavy applications running under Win 11 Pro, as of late. Probably no Tools installation in all of them - still OpenGL works just OK. See my Performance Tests, Win 11 VM seems ALWAYS to be very slow (relatively speaking) on any Host, including Kubuntu (kernel 11.x). I do have a second 32" screen and thus the graphics drivers work just fine (I have RTX in both of my environments and also less-powerful ones in both).
2.
Kubuntu 24.04.02 with kernel 11.x was a bit difficult to install, but I got it done with tweaks - see a rather recent thread of mine, where the interesting part is in the end.
However, no VGA fiddling. I haven't run these OpenGL applications under Kubuntu, but I trust that they would work.
3.
As for kernel 15.x - I don't know. Fedora, I don't know, but you did mention Debian (similar to Kubuntu) and kernel 11.x (like in Kubuntu 24.04.2). Perhaps you want to revisit your tests.
Original Message:
Sent: Jun 28, 2025 11:19 AM
From: Tester man
Subject: vmware workstation VGA display driver not working..... workstation for linux
Hi vmware specialists and people,
This is my first post on this community, so forgive me if I make some rule violation
to put my question here in case it would not be the right place for it.
This is a local laptops installations issue, not a vmware server parc cloud version, that is high above me.
In fact, I wouldn't know where else to post this, since broadcom knows all the answers for vmware and
I can't find any suitable forum for modest users.
Here we go:
Host Situation: 17.5.2 build-23775571 for linux., vmwaretools 12.4.0
laptop os: recently linux fedora42, kernel 15.3
(Yes I know it is an pretty new kernel , but this problem also occured on a Debian like with kernel 11.x which I tried first.)
So what is happening, the vmware workstation 17.6.3 product was installed. The vmware modules are updated and installed.
I created a windows 10, x64 , enterprise vmware machine.
Network ok, Sceen ok, installation vmware tools works, however, ONLY!...if I skip VGA display driver.
At the moment I forget to deslect vga driver in vmware tools custom installation settings, the VGA driver will be installed and that means,
my vmware machine crashes up completely, and also corrupts the linux session. Only solution is to reboot the host machine...
Technically the vmware tools installation succeeds, but it leaves me with a mozaic weird in all colors vmware guest display totally unusable or controllable.
To avoid this unconvenient scenario, the only option is to install vmware tools and choose custom settings and from there deselect
VGA display driver in the menu. Then, the vmware tools installation installs all other needs and I have a working windows 10 guest.
Trying other windows 10 version, doesn't change anything, always the same issue. Not to mention I have tried earlier with windows 11 different versions,
for which the same problem occurs.... So, my question is....what do I need to do to get vga driver installed for a windows guest while running
vmware for linux on a modern workstation linux host?
Please do not ask me to install 17.6.3, I know it is the newest product, but I tried this at first and also from there, the error also occures.
In attempt, to pass some vmware module incompatibility (another issue) I tried an older product version. Didn't change anything for VGA display driver....
Any hints or help appreciated! Thanks in advance.
Dirk.
My laptops specs:
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Meteor Lake-P [Intel Arc Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel
Device-2: Shinetech USB2.0 FHD UVC WebCam driver: uvcvideo type: USB
Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 24.1.8 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.8
compositor: gnome-shell v: 48.2 driver: dri: iris gpu: i915
resolution: 3840x2400~120Hz
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.0.7 renderer: Mesa Intel Arc
Graphics (MTL)
API: Vulkan v: 1.4.313 drivers: intel,llvmpipe surfaces: N/A
API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
Info: Tools: api: glxinfo,vulkaninfo x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop,
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: ASUSTeK product: ASUS Zenbook 14 UX3405MA_UX3405MA
v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: ASUSTeK model: UX3405MA v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required>
UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: UX3405MA.308 date: 07/23/2024