In some situations in which using a virtual machine to perform certain tasks isn't allowed, or could simply raise suspicion, hardening the VM to avoid manual human inspection could be necessary.
Note: with this guide you will be running the VM using VMWare Player (which is included in VMWare Workstation), as Workstation has some issues with display scaling in case of a non-perfect match.
!!! ''VMWare tweaks''
Useful tweaks can be made by editing the file `$HOME/.vmware/preferences`, adding or editing lines as necessary.
* ''Hide menu bar while in full-screen'': `pref.vmplayer.fullscreen.nobar = "TRUE"`
* ''Disable bootup logos or logs'': this should already be the default on Pop!_OS I think.
* ''User autologin'': Users > Your user > Automatic Login.
* ''Darker desktop'': Since the desktop could show for a split second on login, set a fully black background to reduce visible screen flashing: Background > Add picture, and select a fully black image file.
This command first creates a full-screen gnome-terminal window, using our prepared profile and, importantly, with an unique name (to avoid confusion, you can set it equal to the special profile name). The window starts as non-blocking and simply runs a `sleep` command of enough seconds to make sure that our VM will start up and will have already gone past the VMWare BIOS logo; it will close itself after the fact. A few second wait is used immediately after this for good measure (making sure the window is spawned), and then our terminal window is made as "Always on top". Finally, the VM begins startup behind the black terminal window. Remember to click its window to set focus quickly, or else your real mouse will show up!
Make sure to set the terminal window title, terminal profile name, terminal window wait, and VM .vmx path according to your needs and system configuration.
In the current explanations, there are a few holes. While even an expert inspector could never know for sure that you are using a VM, they could still see that something strange is going on on the computer and be suspicious. It's your responsibility to never show too much. For sure, keep in mind:
* While we did the possible to reduce bootup screen flashes, some window transition effects could be somewhat visible (even if they are black-on-black).
