I just completed a vmware install using alien to convert my rpm to deb.  it worked very nicely, I did not test dependancies because I installed them in advence.  I did have to unzip the EULA file

 sudo gunzip /usr/share/doc/vmware/EULA.gz

before running the config

 sudo /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

but everything went very smoothly.  I'll be using my new deb to  upgrade my other system after everything is up and running.  thanks for the HOWTO,  it was quite helpful.