symptom: mouse control in windows guest is lost outside a rectangle about 640x320px starting at the upper left corner of the vmware window. Easy to see because the cursor will change from the windows style to your linux style, unless of course you have the same style.

But you can't click anywhere outside of this area, or just barely, if at all.

fix is here -

in debian add:
export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=force
if that doesn't work, try:
export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes

to file
/etc/vmware/bootstrap

communities.vmware.com/thread/228636;jsessionid=35DA3511455FDEA59DEA320C6DB0AEC9?start=15&tstart=0

for 2.5.3 / 6.5.3 vmplayer/workstation running on 2.6.30/31 kernels.

Cause is a changed libgtk api that breaks something in vmware. This thing of random api changes is getting somewhat tiresomely predictable, and doesn't point to any major change in the role of Gnu/Linux systems on the desktop in the future.

Same issue is hitting iceweasel/firefox, by the way, a libsqlite api change broke bookmarks in all linux desktops that packaged sqlite separately.

Same idea, api change broke things outside of it.
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