Linux Guest will not Autoresize Display in VMWare Workstation Pro 25H2

Last Modified: Wed, 28 Jan 2026 03:55:39 +0000 ; Created: Mon, 26 Jan 2026 18:37:31 +0000

Running a Debian/Kali/Xubuntu/Ubuntu 25+ guest VM, you've installed open-vm-tools-desktop but the display refuses to autosize. Multiple known bugs with VMWare 25.0.0.24995812, open-vm-tools, and xf86-video-vmware. Some distros only offer the buggy version of xf86-video-vmware (e.g. Xubuntu 25.10) while others have dropped that driver upstream.
Workaround

xautoresize care of https://gitlab.com/arnaudr/xautoresize. Install openvm-tools-desktop for the copy+paste support as usual.

Example Setup on Xubuntu 25.10
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y open-vm-tools-desktop
sudo apt-get install -y git
sudo apt install -y libglib2.0-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-randr0-dev


git clone https://gitlab.com/arnaudr/xautoresize.git

cd xautoresize/
sudo make install

# Remove the buggy old and unsupported driver
sudo apt purge xserver-xorg-video-vmware

Reboot

References