The package xserver-xorg-video-vmware was automatically removed from Debian testing due to two bugs.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1116332 is likely a false positive.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1112670 is more serious however. The latest version of xserver-xorg-video-vmware (version 13.4.0-2) seems to have issues, since it was rebuilt against latest version of mesa, and it removed support for XA (X acceleration) library. There's a report upstream at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-vmware/-/issues/12. Quoting a vmware dev:

The driver is basically useless without XA and unlikely to work well, if at all.

There's nothing we can do in Kali at this point.

Thank you for following up on this.
Looks like we can indeed just wait at this point. I will also make sure to try 2025.4 with Wayland sometime..

You get Wayland out of the box if you choose GNOME or KDE for the desktop environment (if you install Kali via the installer).

Thanks for your follow up.

I can confirm a possible workaround for 2025.4 to get the missing package xserver-xorg-video-vmware from the debian repos in the meantime:

sudo bash -c 'echo "# tmp-debian-bookworm" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tmp-debian-bookworm.list \
&& echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tmp-debian-bookworm.list' \
&& sudo apt update \
&& sudo apt install -y xserver-xorg-video-vmware \
&& sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tmp-debian-bookworm.list \
&& sudo apt update

After rebooting the system, the resizing works as expected.

@TivKU, Thanks. this solution worked.

@arnaudr, I tested Gnome and KDE via netinstaller on vmware workstation pro 25H2 on a windows 11 host. I infered from your mention of Wayland that the screen auto resize would work with those options. They do :D

However, screen auto-resize on kde does not work on the login screen, only after logging on and arriving at the desktop does it work while on gnome it works both at the login screen and afterwards.

there also appears to be an additional issue with copy pasting text to and from the guest vm from the host. on KDE i can copy text from the host to the guest, but not the reverse. On gnome i can NOT copy paste to OR from the guest and host.

I imagine these quirks in kde and gnome are not related to the xserver-xorg-video-vmware package since kali gnome and kde use wayland, but could this be an overall problem with open-vm-tools-desktop across all the available latest desktop envrionments in kali?

Should i submit a bug report for these things in gnome and kde?

Thanks for testing. Indeed we expect autoresize to work on Wayland (ie. GNOME and KDE).

We're working on a workaround for XFCE, should be ready soon-ish. As for copy-n-paste, I have no idea. If it doesn't work, there should be plenty of bug reports already out there, no need to file new ones, but rather let's try to find places where these issues are tracked. The Debian bug tracker is a good place to look at, I did a quick search and found this one:

• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1112665

@arnaudr, thank you for the quick response, i'll be sure to check upstream/source for active issues before duplicating efforts here

Regarding autoresize that stopped working (Xfce desktop, Virtualbox/VMware VM) -- you can now install the package xautoresize, then log out and log back in. Then autoresize should be working again.

The other workarounds -- trying to install a old version of the package xserver-xorg-video-vmware, or manually copying vmware_drv.so and libxatracker.so.2 from somewhere else -- are no longer needed.

This is a great workaround, i just installed it and it works great!!! though across reboots i have to repeat the steps: log in > log out > then log back in for it to work again. I assume that's expected while the open vm tools package developers work on a fix on their end

@flyingsquirrel

there also appears to be an additional issue with copy pasting text to and from the guest vm from the host. on KDE i can copy text from the host to the guest, but not the reverse. On gnome i can NOT copy paste to OR from the guest and host.

I tested with prebuilt VM images, built from latest Kali rolling this week. I used Virtualbox. Host is Debian. For me, copy-n-paste (text) works out of the box for GNOME and Xfce, in both directions. For KDE, it works only from host to guest, like you reported. Drag-n-drop never works for me, some issue with guest addition I think.

though across reboots i have to repeat the steps: log in > log out > then log back in for it to work again

That shouldn't be. After you install xautoresize it should just work (after you login). It doesn't work for the login screen, but that's Ok.

The program is automatically started after you login, you should be able to see it via ps fax | grep xautoresize.

@arnaudr, you're right my apologies. I realize what i was doing was using the windows+Left to snap my vmware workstation application so it took up the left side of the screen. The resize worked, then i'd reboot, the autoresize wouldn't work on the login screen as you said, after loggin on it still kept the same resolution as the login screen with the black bars above and below. I thought at this point i had to log out and log back in again, which worked, but i could have just move the vmware application window out of it's current position into a new size and then the resize would kick in again.

hope that made sense. i can possibly do a short screen recording/gif if you'd like. But you were right i didn't have to log in twice after a reboot, i just had to readjust the window after the initial log in for it to kick in