Ubuntu Desktop To Auto-Install Necessary VM Tools/Drivers When Running On VMware

In seeking to improve the out-of-the-box experience when running the Ubuntu desktop as a guest virtual machine within VMware's products, Ubuntu is planning on having the open-vm-tools-desktop package be automatically installed for providing a better initial experience.

Canonical's Jean-Baptiste Lallement has been working on the support for having open-vm-tools-desktop be automatically installed by ubuntu-drivers at installation time for the Linux distribution. This is intended to provide a better first-boot experience following installation of Ubuntu within VMware products.

The open-vm-tools-desktop package provides the "Open Virtual Machine Tools" of different open-source drivers and utilities catered towards VMware virtual machines.

But given the timing of this change in being past the Disco Dingo feature freeze, an exception is being sought as part of the planned addition. It's likely we'll see this change still accepted for Ubuntu 19.04 but otherwise it would be work on the table for Ubuntu 19.10.