[VMware Player] Share USB mobile broadband between host and guest OS

To share a USB mobile broadband connection between the host and guest OSs with VMware Player, simply set the guest OS network interface to use the NAT mode instead of the bridged mode.

This way you'll also be able to set up routing rules on the host OS which will apply to the guest OS too.

[VmWare] Reduce guest swapping

VmWare allows you to specify how the guest system handles swapping to the host disk. Much like Linux's swappiness value, you can suggest to use more host memory instead of swapping to disk; this is especially useful if you do not have a swap partition.

To edit the setting, open your VM's .vmx file, while the VM is powered off, using text editor and add these lines:

MemTrimRate = "0"
mainMem.useNamedFile = "FALSE"
sched.mem.pshare.enable = "FALSE"
prefvmx.useRecommendedLockedMemSize = "TRUE"

Note: If you are using a Linux host, use the following entry instead of mainMem.useNamedFile which only applies to Windows hosts:

mainmem.backing = "swap"

[Linux] Install VMWare Player

After downloading VMWare Player for Linux, you may feel a bit stuck on how to install it. Luckily, it's as easy as:

gksudo bash PATH_TO_DOWNLOAD_LOCATION/VMware-Player-VERSION.bundle

If you do not have gksu, install it:

sudo apt-get install gksu

Access NAT and Network configuration tool in VmWare Player

The NAT and Network configuration tool available for Windows users in VmWare Workstation used to be available for VmWare Player users too but since release 6, it's become a little harder to get.

All you need are two files: vmnetcfg.exe and vmnetcfglib.dll. You can find them both in a typical Workstation installer (the free trial version too), by running this command against the installer:

VMWare-worksation-INSTALLER_NAME.exe /e .\unpack

now just browse to the newly created unpack folder and rename _vmnetcfglib.dll without the leading underscore, then copy both in your Player installation directory.