On a Debian/Ubuntu system you can get WS8 running on 13.04 with the default kernel working, by doing this:
# Become root
sudo -i
# Do a couple of pre-requisites
apt-get install build-essential
ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r)/include/linux/version.h
# Extract each of the VMware module packages
# Fetch and apply patches required for this release...
wget http://communities.vmware.com/servlet/JiveServlet/download/2234875-108182/vmci.linux-3-8.patch
patch -p0 < vmci.linux-3-8.patch
# Put the VMware module source packages back together again
for file in *-only
do
tar cvf `basename $file -only`.tar $file
done
rm -rf *-only
# Tell VMware to rebuild the modules - can also just run the command "vmware" as root
vmware-modconfig --console --install-all
Hope this helps.