Here is a quick walk-through for installing Vmware Server 1.0.5 on the Desktop version of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, read through this before you start and you'll save yourself some minor headaches. To begin, download the following packages -

Vmware Server 1.0.5

vmware-any-any-update116

Then, add the linux packages you'll need for installation -

$ sudo apt-get install xinetd

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic (you may or may not need this command, run it anyway to be sure)

Now untar and start the installation of Vmware Server -

$ tar -zxf VMware-server-1.0.5-80187.tar.gz

$ cd vmware-server-distrib

$ sudo ./vmware-install.pl

When the vmware-install script prompts you asking if you would like to invoke and run vmware-config.pl answer no and exit the script. Now untar the vmware-any-any package and run the install script -

$ tar -zxf vmware-any-any-update116.tar.gz

$ cd vmware-any-any-update116

$ gcc -o update update.c

$ sudo ./runme.pl

Let the installation complete then do the following -

$ sudo cp /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libgcc_s.so.1/

$ sudo cp /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0 /usr/lib/vmware/lib/libpng12.so.0/

Thats it, you should have a working Vmware Server installation, hope this helps !