VMWARE(4)

✨ VMWARE(4) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, we're talking about vmware — the VMware SVGA video driver, straight out of the Kernel Interfaces Manual 💖 this is literally the Xorg driver for VMware virtual video cards and she is serving

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

no cap, this is all it takes to summon her:

Section "Device"
  Identifier "devname"
  Driver "vmware"
  ...
EndSection

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

vmware is an Xorg driver for VMware virtual video cards. that's the whole vibe. she's the one who makes your virtual machine's screen go brrr ✨

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💅 MODESETTING, XINERAMA AND RANDR12 💅

so here's the tea 🍓 — if the driver can connect to the "vmwgfx" kernel module on linux, she will attempt to use kernel modesetting, and then she'll also use RandR12 for multiple output operation instead of Xinerama. iconic behaviour honestly.

wanna know which one you actually got? check the X server log, or run the "xrandr" application. either one will tell you whether RandR12 or Xinerama is the one doing the work 👑

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🔥 3D ACCELERATION 🔥

if the driver can connect to the "vmwgfx" kernel module on linux and the Virtual Machine is set up to use 3D acceleration, she will try to use Gallium3D XA to accelerate 3D operations. main character energy fr fr.

she will also, by default, enable DRI — that's the Direct Rendering Infrastructure — primarily for accelerated OpenGL 🌈

and if 3D acceleration is available, she'll in addition provide an additional XVideo adaptor for textured video. obsessed.

Gallium3D XA, "libxatracker.so" and the accelerated OpenGL driver, "vmwgfx_dri.so", are provided by the mesa distribution 🫶

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🌸 CONFIGURATION DETAILS 🌸

please refer to xorg.conf(5) for general configuration details, bestie — this section only covers the configuration details that are specific to this driver 💜

the driver auto-detects the version of any virtual VMware SVGA adapter. yes she just knows.

the following driver Options are supported:

• Option "HWCursor" "boolean" — enable or disable the HW cursor. Default: off.
• Option "Xinerama" "boolean" — disable or enable Xinerama support. Default: xinerama is enabled if the hardware supports it.
• Option "StaticXinerama" "string" — provide a static xinerama geometry that will be active at server startup and will not be overridden at runtime. the format is "Width1xHeight1+Xoffset1+Yoffset1;Width2xHeight2+Xoffset2+Yoffset2" and so on. Negative offsets are not supported 🙈 if the driver is using RandR12, this option should be used to place and enable outputs at driver startup time, or else when VMware tools is not used for that purpose. also please see option "GuiLayout".
• Option "GuiLayout" "string" — a synonym to option "StaticXinerama", since the latter name is somewhat misleading when RandR12 is favoured before Xinerarma. (yes, that's how it's spelled in the source, we don't fix it, we respect it 💀)
• Option "AddDefaultMode" "boolean" — provide a default mode with a resolution identical to the resolution of the guest before the X server was started. the X server will thus try to start without changing resolution. Default: on.
• Option "RenderAccel" "boolean" — try to accelerate render operations if the operations are reading from previously accelerated contents (3D or video). this option is needed for 3D support. Default: on if 3D acceleration is supported. Otherwise off.
• Option "DRI" "boolean" — enable the Direct Rendering Infrastructure. Default: on if 3D acceleration is supported and "RenderAccel" is enabled. Otherwise off.
• Option "DirectPresents" "boolean" — speed up OpenGL swapbuffers by skipping a copy operation. this provides some OpenGL swapbuffer speedups, but may cause performance degradation and rendering errors when 3D contents is read back for mixing with software rendered contents 😭 Default: off.
• Option "HwPresents" "boolean" — this is a developer convenience option and should not be used by distros or normal users 🚫 when enabled, it copies software rendered contents to a 3D surface before presenting it, so that the visible screen is always present on a 3D surface. Default: off.
• Option "RenderCheck" "boolean" — this is a developer convenience option and should not be used by distros or normal users 🚫 when enabled, it tries to use 3D acceleration for all XRender operations where 3D acceleration is supported, resulting in a considerable slowdown due to the increased number of readbacks of accelerated contents from host to guest. this option is used to verify that the accelerated Xrender paths works correctly with the "rendercheck" application. Default: off.

not me begging you to leave the dev options alone — they're literally labelled "should not be used by distros or normal users" for a reason, bestie 💀

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

Xorg(1), xorg.conf(5), Xserver(1), X(7), xrandr(1)

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💖 AUTHORS 💖

Copyright (c) 1999-2007 VMware, Inc.

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and that's the whole page, periodt ✨ this was VMWARE(4), part of the Kernel Interfaces Manual, coming to you from X Version 11, xf86-video-vmware 13.4.0 — go forth and configure your virtual video card, you absolute icon 🦋💅🎀