Contributors of Ubuntu have taken open-vm-tools and created a installable package for Ubuntu, and included it in the standard software repositories so you can install it easily. More here

If you work much with virtual machines, you know how important installing VMware Tools can be. Even without the graphical interface of Linux (called X11), there are a number of important features that installing VMware Tools offers you and you really shouldn’t skip it. I’ve struggled with installing VMware Tools on Ubuntu Linux in the past, and I hope you find this guide helpful in making it even quicker and easier. It seems newer versions of Ubuntu and VMware Tools broke my previous instructions. Luck for us, VMware and Ubuntu contributors have made the process easier than it was in the past.