Installing Mint in VMWare 16 player

Download your Mint installation https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Download your VMware player

Put your mint image in your VMware ISO folder. It is usually in the Program Files x86. Check with your version of VMWare.

Create a new Virtual Machine, the wizard will pop up. For Mint you will select install from ISO, you may get a warning that VMWare doesn’t know this OS but we need to perform another step. Click Next. On Select a guest OS page, select Linux and the drop-down version will be Debian 6 64-bit. [INFO]Version is which family your Linux flavor belongs to. More information can be found on the website of your flavor of Linux and what family it belongs to.[INFO] Click Next. Name the virtual machine. You can change the location of where the VM will live. Click Next.

This screen is for setting up the Disk Capacity, I recommend leaving the sizes as default unless you need a larger or smaller installation. Click Next and Finish. Play the virtual machine. You may get popups that the machine is not configured or to install VMware tools. Install VMware tools to make modifications to your installation if you choose.

The next step, while loading the VM you will get a popup for the GNU GRUB. It is asking what you want to boot into. Select Start Linux Mint 21 or in compatibility mode if it has issues launching. I have had issues where Mint can’t launch but following the same steps will work so you may need to try installation again.

You should now be in a bootable version of Linux; however, your settings will not be saved. This is good if you want to try it out, mess around, or break something. To finish the installation, you should see an Install Linux Mint on the desktop. Double Click on the icon. It will ask your language, choose your language, click next, then it will ask to choose your keyboard layout language. Click continue. The next screen asks for Multimedia codecs, I would suggest installing the codecs at this point, in whichever context you may use this VM at some point you may want to watch a video on a particular topic. Click Continue and verify Erase disk and install Linux Mint. This is safe for VMWare however take caution if dual booting you may want to create a new partition. Click Install Now. At this point you may want to leave the VM environment and a keyboard shortcut to return to your desktop would be to press CTRL + ALT. Choose your time zone, click Continue. Next setup Who are you – Select your account name, computer name, and password. Click continue when ready.

..after it is down Installing click restart now

VMware may bug you about installing VMware tools or Linux might throw errors to remove media. Install the tools if you want and ignore the errors

Mint is now fully installed and ready to use.