How do I install VMware Workstation Player 12.11 on Ubuntu 16.04?

Question

When I attempted to install VMware Workstation Player 12.11 on Ubuntu 16.04, I got the following error:

root@workstation:/home/user/Downloads# ./VMware-Player-12.1.1-3770994.x86_64.bundle
Extracting VMware Installer...done.
Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module": libcanberra-gtk-module.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
root@workstation:/home/user/Downloads#

Solution 1

Make sure you sudo all these commands, or run these as root.

The missing module is in the file libcanberra-gtk-module.so. It's included in the package libcanberra-gtk-module (source).

So you'll need to:

1. Install libcanberra-gtk-module:

   sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module
   

2. Create a symlink to the missing library:

   sudo ln -sT "../$(uname -m)-linux-gnu/gtk-2.0/modules/libcanberra-gtk-module.so" /usr/lib/libcanberra-gtk-module.so
   

3. Make the .bundle file you downloaded from VMware executable and run it:

   chmod +x ./VMware-Player-12.1.1-3770994.x86_64.bundle
   sudo ./VMware-Player-12.1.1-3770994.x86_64.bundle
   

4. Follow the GUI installation that pops up on the screen.

Solution 2

You can forgo the need for GTK modules if you use the command-line installer instead:

sudo ./VMware-Player-12.1.1-3770994.x86_64.bundle --console