VMWare Problems with Keyboard Input

I just tried updating a (couple of months old) Manjaro/Xfce running under VMware Workstation Pro (Windows host).

Manjaro booted up fine, I installed the updates and then rebooted, to a black screen.

I decided to nuke the VM and create a new one using manjaro-xfce-25.0.5-minimal-250713-linux612.iso.

After several hours I have been unable to get it running in any kind of usable state. The main issue seems to be the VM failing to pick up on all keyboard interrupts and mouse clicks. And I assume this is related to the changes around xf86-video-vmware, open-vm-tools, mesa, et al.

In fact, this seems to be a problem with the LiveCD even before I’ve performed the installation.

Has anyone found some secret sauce to make the current Manjaro/Xfce run nicely under VMware Workstation? Or should I wait for the aforementioned packages to settle down?

Not assistance, but a question:

I am curious - and almost totally ignorant about Windows (your host OS) -
why would one choose VMware over qemu / libvirt / virt-manager or virtualbox
to run a Linux OS on a Windows host?

Is it just easier in Windows to use VMware?

I cannot help with anything you asked about.

I do use virt-manager and did use virtualbox - have never used VMware.
None of those that I do and did use where used on Windows as a host, though.

you should check the licenses of vmware first. any changes from broadcom ? as already mentioned, there are better and more reliable products like proxmox or even better libvirt/qemu

I ran into issues with VitrualBox and switched to VMware a few years ago. It was easy at the time.

Although I have not seen others report exactly the same problems, it seems some are have difficulties with the latest Manjaro under VirtualBox too.

Thanks for the reply to my off topic request.

Indeed - but I don’t use that anymore.
virt-manager / libvirt is a native solution and works well
… perhaps not under Windows as a host - I would not know.

As I understand it, there are no more retail versions of VMware Workstation (or Fusion), since Broadcom has effectively made it open source.

While open source isn’t specifically mentioned in this article, once logged into Broadcom to download the software, the licensing is clearly described.

With a couple of minor hassles, I have been able to get Manjaro/Xfce running nicely under VirtualBox.

The hassles were:

  • Installing the updated VirtualBox Guest Additions
  • Nuking ‘splash’ from the boot line to stop Plymouth from blocking the boot

I have installed xfce in a vmware virtual machine just a few days ago, when I tried to find the cause of the black screen issue.

I can try again using the latest 25.0.5 ISO but I am fairly confident it will work.