How to Install VMware Workstation Player on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa [Step by Step Guide]

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VMware Workstation is a line of Desktop Hypervisor products which lets users run virtual machines, containers and Kubernetes clusters.

In Short VMware Workstation is a virtual machine software that is used for x86 and x86-64 computers to run multiple operating systems over a single physical host computer.

Each virtual machine can run a single instance of any operating system (Microsoft, Linux, etc.) simultaneously.

VMware Workstation strongly supports hardware compatibility and works as a bridge between the host and virtual machine for all kinds of hardware resources including hard disks, USB devices and CD-ROMs.

All device drivers are installed via the host machine.

VMware Player is not open-source, and it is free only for personal non-commercial use.

If you are looking for an open-source virtualization platform, you should try Oracle’s VirtualBox.

For more about VMware Workstation Player, please check its homepage.

This article describes how to install VMware Workstation Player on Ubuntu 20.04.

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

For better performance, your system must meet the following requirements:

1.3GHz or faster 64-bit CPU.
2 GB RAM memory minimum/ 4GB RAM or more recommended.

Step #1 Installing build dependencies

Before VMware Workstation Player, you must install some required build dependencies.

To do that, run the following commands.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install build-essential linux-headers-generic

Step #2 Downloading VMware Workstation Player

You can download the latest version of VMware Workstation Player Here.

But If you choose to download the package through the Linux terminal use the wget command.

$ wget --user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:60.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/60.0" https://www.vmware.com/go/getplayer-linux

Step #3 Installing VMware Workstation Player

Once the download is completed, type the following command to make the installation file executable.

$ chmod +x getplayer-linux

Now run the following command to install VMware Workstation Player. It's pretty straightforward.

$ sudo ./getplayer-linux --required --eulas-agreed

Just follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation. The installation may take several minutes.

Extracting VMware Installer...done.
Installing VMware Player 16.1.0
    Configuring...
[######################################################################] 100%
Installation was successful.

After successful installation of VMware Workstation Player type 'VMware Workstation Player' at Activities search bar to launch the Player.

When you start the application for the first time, a window like the following will appear asking you whether you like to use VMware Workstation Player for free for personal non-commercial use.

Make appropriate selection and click on Finish button to start VMware Workstation Player.

How to uninstall VMware Workstation Player

Type the following command to Uninstall the VMware Player.

$ sudo /usr/bin/vmware-installer -u vmware-player

If you want to keep the configuration files then you can provide the input as 'quit' or just press Enter to remove the application completely from the system.

$ Uninstalling VMware Installer
    Deconfiguring...
[######################################################################] 100%
Uninstallation was successful.

Conclusion

I hope that now you have a good understanding of How to Install VMware Workstation Player on Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa.

If anyone does have any questions about what we covered in this guide then feel free to ask in the comment section below and I will do my best to answer those.