Am I the only one to wonder about the size of the minimal installation of about 1 GByte for a plain x86_64 (textonly) installation?
I installed 11.1 x86_64 in a guest on VMWare Workstation. So perhaps the open vmware tools have automagically been added to my setup.
On 11.0 in x86_64 the open vmware-tools have had much dependencies to X (part of the vmware tools are responsable for managing X, like mouse focus an so on).
You are most likely correct - IIRC the vmware tools require X, which in the ordinary minimal (i.e., server) install are not required. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done this, so my memory is foggy. But check into whether you actually need the vmware tools at all - it will depend on how you intend to use the vm.