Question: I just installed Mint 18 as a virtual machine using VMware 12. I have the problem that I can't install vmware-tools. At first I tried to install open-vm-tools as is recommended by Mint, but it didn't work, so I uninstalled it and then tried to install the default vmware-tools, but it can't be installed.

[![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7hW6C.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7hW6C.png)

Answer: 
Forget VM tools, use:

```
sudo apt-get install open-vm-tools open-vm-tools-desktop

```

Then do a full restart and check that the client screen will resize when the host window resizes.
You need to `sudo` or `su` at root first **before** running `vmware-tools-install`.