Background

Around the time Ubuntu 16.04 came out, I got an iMac. I figure it was time to try VMware again with a Ubuntu VM and see what happens.

Creating Ubuntu VM

Only surprise was the scaling of the installer window so that the OK button is off the screen. I used the tab and enter keys to guess when I had selected the OK button. Others are more sophisticated.

Solution: https://communities.vmware.com/thread/534980?tstart=0

Fusion unity support

Good luck searching the internet trying to figure out why the Enter Unity VMware Fusion button is grayed out. The search is difficult because the default Ubuntu 16.04 desktop is also called Unity!

My favorite Ubuntu desktop was way back in 10.04. I have tried Ubuntu Unity but find it requires much more mousing around. Each time I updated, I try Ubuntu Unity and I always give up and switch to flashback metacity. Turns out Ubuntu Unity doesn't work with Fusion Unity, but flashback metacity does.

fallback metracity configuration: http://notesofaprogrammer.blogspot.com/2014/09/ubuntu-1404-trust-and-vmware-unity-mode.html

Problems and their resolution

appstreamcli double free error

If you see something like

sudo /usr/bin/appstreamcli refresh

*** Error in `/usr/bin/appstreamcli': double free or corruption (fasttop): 0x0000000000917560 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x77725)[0x7f80ce5c9725]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x7ff4a)[0x7f80ce5d1f4a]
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(cfree+0x4c)[0x7f80ce5d5abc]
...

You can resolve the problem using

sudo apt install appstream/xenial-backports

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