VMWARE Testing..No Cinnamon or GNOME3 after update...

[hogfan]

I will start by saying that I am new to Linux Mint. However, I do currently run a couple of Ubuntu Minimal installations with Maverick (Raid 5 Media server using mdadm) and Oneiric (XBMC Nettop). I have an 8 year old Vaio laptop that is on it's last leg and will be replacing it soon. This time I am wanting to go with Linux Mint to give Linux another shot as a full-blown desktop. I discovered that I learned Mac OSX very quickly once I forced myself to use a Hackintosh machine for daily tasks. I plan to do the same with Linux Mint Debian Edition. It never hurts to be proficient in multiple Operating systems. In my opinion, Ubuntu is good but just has an ugly UI and color scheme, so Mint fits the bill perfectly. However, I have run into some problems testing out Mint LMDE in a VMWare virtual machine. After installing LMDE earlier today, I installed all available updates from the update manager. Once I did this and rebooted I was stuck in Gnome classic. I installed Cinnamon from the Software Manager, but it refuses to load also. I was really wanting to try out the various window managers to decide on what I liked best. I was able to install Cairo dock with OpenGL and have animated dock icons. However, I can't get anything to load at boot other that Classic Gnome. I installed VMWARE tools, and start vmware-toolbox from a terminal at login, but do not see any change. Since after initial installation I had Gnome3 working (before Vmware tools was installed as well), I am assuming the update broke something. What steps do I need to take to troubleshoot this so that I can get Cinnamon & Gnome3 going again? Thanks for any suggestions.

-hogfan

[Monsta]

People are reporting various 3D-related issues with Linux guests on VMware. It would probably be easier just to switch from VMware to Virtualbox.

[lmdeman]

AFAIK vmware doesn't support 3d acceleration for linux guests yet. The pity is that gnome3 currently requires 3D acceleration to enable gnome-shell/cinnamon. If not available, you are restricted to gnome-classic. Note that gnome 2 worked with or without 3D and thus MATE should work too.
If you want to try out gnome 3 shell/cinnamon in a virtual machine it is advisable to use Virtualbox which currently supports 3D acceleration for linux guests, though the graphics performance may not be over-the-top. I also heard of a vmware tech-preview (http://communities.vmware.com/community ... tiontp2012) with OpenGL X.Org driver, but it's currently sort of a pre-beta release.

[funkatron]

Have I got news for you. Fresh off the compile line I present 3d....

vmware-exp-with-mint3d-effects.png

[kbkatz1]

I have a similar issue, although not on VMWare or VirtualBox, following post.