VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhance the guest operating system's performance and improve virtual machine management. VMware Tools also include the drivers you need to get the guest operating system working correctly in a virtualization environment.
If this set of tools is not installed in the virtual machine, the guest operating system is missing some important features and capabilities.
For Linux there are 2 options to install VMware Tools:
- from the original distribution kit,
- from the open source distribution (Open VM Tools, OVT).
VMware recommends using an open source distribution as it is easier to install, easier to update, and compatible with almost all popular Linux versions. More details available in the VMware knowledge base
The open source distribution is available in major Linux repositories as a package called open-vm-tools.
Installation commands for some Linux distributions:
Debian/Ubuntu
apt install open-vm-tools
RHEL/CentOS/Fedora
yum install open-vm-tools
