Linux Mint in Windows 8 via VMware Player


March 29, 2014
2 minutes

For a while I have been trying to emulate the *nix terminal in Windows 8 using cygwin, but I wanted to get the full experience, so I decided to run Linux Mint in VMware Player. The setup instructions follow.

First of all you need to disable Hyper-V to be able to install VMware Player. To do that run the following command from an elevated command prompt:

In case you need to enable Hyper-V again, the following undoes the changes:

Next, install and run VMware Player.

  1. Create a new virtual machine:

    step 1

  2. Select location of the Linux image, I went for Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64-bit:

    step 2

  3. The version is Linux 3.x kernel 64-bit:

    step 3

  4. Select where you want to store the virtual machine:

    step 4

  5. Give it appropriate disk capacity, I gave mine only 8GB at fist, but ran out of it quite quickly (if you resize the capacity later on you will most-likely have to do some disk partitioning):

    step 5

  6. Before you finish you will want to customize hardware:

    step 6

  7. Select how much memory you want to use for your VM:

    step 7

  8. Enable 3D graphics acceleration from the Display settings:

    step 8

    And that’s you ready to roll in Linux.

My screen resolution (1920x1080) was not listed in the display settings, here’s how I fixed it.

  1. Calculate VESA CVT mode lines:
  1. Copy the output starting from after Modeline, and prepend it with xrandr –newmode, e.g.:
  1. and then:

  1. Switch to console mode using Alt+Ctrl+F1 and log in.

  2. Stop Display Manager:

  1. create X configuration file:
  1. and start it again:
  1. Switch to back to the desktop mode using Alt+Ctrl+F7.