3D acceleration is not possible for Ubuntu as virtual machine by VMware Fusion?

Question

I have installed VMware Fusion 4.1.2 in my MacBook Pro, and installed Ubuntu 11.10 as a virtual machine.

I have tried to enable the 3d acceleration, via Virtual Machine -> Settings -> Display of the menu, we have the following setting:

The note does not mention whether it works for Ubuntu... To do a test, I choose Ubuntu instead of Ubuntu 2D when I log in, but it still looks like 2D, and echo $DESKTOP_SESSION gives ubuntu-2d.

Do you confirm that today VMware Fusion 4.1.2 is not able to enable 3D for Ubuntu?

PS: Graphics info: AMD Radeon HD 6770M 1024 MB

Answer 1

The 3D graphics support for Linux guests is not available currently.

However, there is good news soon.

As you may be aware VMWare release future versions of their software for evaluation by testers and developers.

The "tech preview" of vmware fusion promises:

Rendering and graphics correctness issues on all platforms and applications Linux 3D desktop experience, particularly Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and recent OpenSUSE releases, which should work out-of-the-box Linux 3D application graphics correctness and performance

In the current iteration of the tech preview notes:

Unity mode has been disabled for Linux and Windows 8 virtual machines in this release.

However, given the first statement - the Unity issues could/should be resolved in later beta versions of the software.