So I’m trying to play around with Fedora in a VM with VMWare Workstation Player (v17.5.1) but I’m running into a problem I don’t know how to solve. I use the Fedora 39 1.5 ISO file which is the most current version that’s available for download and after installing it in the VM everything works fine. I setup the install and I can use it, still working after rebooting it. But as soon as I do sudo dnf update or update everything via the Software Center the screen of the VM goes black and I can’t use the VM anymore. No matter if I reboot it or not. When I power off the VM I can see the Fedora loading icon for a short period but that’s it.

This also happened with NixOS but not with Fedora Server. I guess it must have something to do with the DE as both distros were installed with Gnome but I don’t know how to solve it. I already tried reinstalling VMWare to no avail. I will try installing a distro with KDE to maybe rule out one cause.

Does anyone have any idea what’s going on here? I’m running VMWare on Windows 11.

  • moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
    3·
    8 months ago

    I remember this being brought up with an acquaintance, but basically there’s a bug where the newest fedora kernel isn’t compatible with VMWare.

    So yeah. Either wait for a kernel patch, or wait for VMWare to fix their stuff. But they might not, other users have mentioned that they’ve gone downhill after being bought by Broadcom.

    If you want 3d acceleration on virtualized Linux guests, other than vmware, you have two options:

    • GPU passthrough
    • Virtual gpu (virgl/virtualgl/egl-headless)

    The latter is basically only going to work on a Linux host, virtualizing Linux guests (although it is possible on windows, with caveats).

    The other downside is that no matter which option you pick, it’s all going to end up being a bit more tinkering (either a little — assign a vm a gpu, or a lot, install unsigned windows drivers), compared to VMWare’s “just works”/one click 3d acceleration setup.

      • slazer2au@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Long story short VMware was purchased by Broadcom and have said they only care about the top 600 customers and the rest can do their own thing.

        Since the acquisition Broadcom has increased prices by at least 2x, increased the minimum purchase number to be a partner, discontinued the free ESXi hypervisor, and are looking for someone to purchase the consumer product line like Workstation.

        Your other options are Virtual Box by Oracle or head down the Xen path.