GNOME desktop freezing on VMware Workstation Pro for Windows host and Fedora guest (likely due to 3D acceleration)

[hermidalc]

Hello VMware Development Team,

I have a new Windows laptop running latest Windows 10.0.15063 and VMware Workstation 12.5.7 build-5813279. It uses hybrid graphics between integrated Intel and Nvidia GPUs using Nvidia Optimus with default settings on a 4K display. VMware runs on the Intel HD 630 GPU (verified by Nvidia GPU activity monitor never showing VMware process). In the BIOS I've set for the Intel GPU to get the max amount dedicated video memory possible (512 MB). I created a new guest running the latest Fedora 25, with 2 GB max guest memory for graphics. open-vm-tools and open-vm-tools-desktop (10.1.5-4.fc25) installed automatically and successfully.

The Gnome desktop will just randomly freeze and I cannot do anything or get control of it without doing a hard reboot of the VM. After a lot of troubleshooting to figure out what is causing the freezing it appears to be due to the 3D acceleration and only in full screen mode. The freezing will occur in both XOrg and Wayland desktop sessions. If I turn off 3D acceleration or not have the VM in full screen (4K) then it doesn't freeze, but this is very inconvenient as Gnome doesn't run well without 3D acceleration.

$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc. OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on SVGA3D; build: RELEASE; LLVM; OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 17.0.5 OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30 OpenGL core profile context flags: (none) OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile OpenGL core profile extensions: OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 17.0.5 OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30 OpenGL context flags: (none) OpenGL extensions: OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 17.0.5 OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00 OpenGL ES profile extensions: