http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn posted an article on tool packages for specific operating systems titled “Operating System Specific Packages for VMware Tools“
“We are pleased to announce the General Availability of Operating System Specific Packages (OSPs) for VMware Tools. Using OSPs, enterprise customers virtualizing Linux on VI will be able to install/update/manage their VMware Tools installations using the guest operating systems’ native packaging format (rpm, deb etc) and update mechanisms (apt, yum, rug, etc).
More details including a list of supported ESX releases, guest operating systems, documentation and package repository are available from the OSP web page at http://www.vmware.com/download/packages.html (or just packages.vmware.com).“
Full text at http://blogs.vmware.com/vmtn/2008/12/operating-system-specific-packages-for-vmware-tools.html