December 2009
Fetch it from the VMWare site, after submitting all your personal data, family tree three generations upwards and proof of vaccination, registering, yadayadayada. This is still tedious.
sudo apt-get install expect expect-dev
With expect-dev comes autoexpect
...
gzip -dc /usr/share/doc/expect-dev/examples/expect_autoexpect.gz > autoexpect
chmod u+x ./autoexpect
sudo ./autoexpect sh ./VMware-Player-3.0.0-203739.x86_64.bundle --console --custom
This creates ./script.exp
sudo vmware-installer -u vmware-player
Now comes the fun part:
sudo ./script.exp