Installing Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx on VMware

UPDATE 8/24/10:
If you want to map your VM to an external IP or a domain name, you may need to use VMware Workstation or something with the VMware NAT feature instead of VMware player. On Windows 7/Vista, you might have to disable your firewall for the VMware NAT to work.

Working on a Windows environment can be tricky sometimes with ruby and rails. Expecially if you want to try Rails 3, which recommends using Ruby 1.9.2. So my alternative was to run a VMware instance of Ubuntu.

First off, download the disk image.
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
The 32-bit version should suffice.

When you are done installing Ubuntu on the VM, you may notice the keyboard does not work.
This is because the keyboard settings with the VMware aren't properly configured.

Turn on the on-screen keyboard in the Universal Access Preferences pane.

Reboot the VM and login with the onscreen keyboard. (For me, the on screen keyboard did not appear after the settings change)

A posting on the VMware forums has the fix after you can login:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/1515622#151562

Edit /etc/default/console-setup

vi /etc/default/console-setup

And replace:

XKBMODEL="SKIP"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="U.S. English"
XKBOPTIONS=""

with:

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

And that should be it!