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I have Windows XP Professional, and have installed VMWare Workstation. I intend to use XP as my host system, but I wanted to find out if it is possible to run Quantal Quetzal as my guest OS in VMWare Workstation.

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It depends on what you want to accomplish. It's pretty easy to install Ubuntu 12.10 in a new machine, but not everything works completely.

As of this writing (October 20), there were known issues when trying to compile VMware Tools (which provide better integration with the host for sound, video, shared folders, and other benefits). This is a problem due to the Linux Kernel 3.5, which ships with Ubuntu.

There may be a patch floating around the Internet which can be used to get tools up and running (I've had trouble finding it, but have read several forum posts which refer to it), but you have to manually patch the sources. This isn't difficult, but can be somewhat involved and is a pain.

Please note that all of my comments apply to Workstation 8.0. The problem may have been fixed in the most recent version of Workstation (9.0). But as I just purchased 8.0 six months ago (and it is supposed to provide the most recent version of VMware Tools), I refuse to shell out again for a new upgrade.

Edit: Since writing the original response, I've since gone back and tried a few other options for getting the VMware tools up and running. Ubuntu provides a package called open-vm-tools which have a patched copy of the VMware tools available. Using this package, I was able to get almost everyhing running correctly, with one exception: the shared folders have to be mounted manually.

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To sum up, yes, but VMware tools will probably not work correctly for a while. :) –  Argusvision Oct 21 '12 at 20:18
OMG, I wasted hours trying to get whatever random VMware Tools the ESX server has to compile on 12.10. Then I came across this answer, which was the first time I heard of open-vm-tools. One apt-get install and it's all done. Thanks so much! –  Lachlan Apr 3 '13 at 1:29
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Sure - lots of developers have been testing Quantal in a virtualized environment. I can't speak to XP Professional hosts in particular, but Quantal is fine inside VMware Workstation.

Installing VMware Tools is different. It only takes about 15 minutes to install the OS once you download it. So just give it a try.

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Can you explain what you mean when you say installing VMTools is different? –  Eliah Kagan Oct 9 '12 at 5:05
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