Installation on kernel 2.6.24 is messy , the reason is VMWare is not up to speed to generate vmmon modules for the latest kernel.

I encountered the following error, since I tried to use a latest kernel.
Version mismatch with vmmon module: expecting 167.0, got 161.0.
You have an incorrect version of the 'vmmon' kernel module.
Try reinstalling VMware Workstation.

but before this error you are most likely to get lot of compilation errors which you can get around by running any-any-patch.

so here is the recommended method to get VMWare installed in Debian.

KVM needs support from processor (and maybe from BIOS,chipset,ect), which is exactly why it will be faster. In Intel this is called "VT or Vanderpool Technology".
thus, first run
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep flag
then if either vmx or svm is in the output you are lucky and can install KVM.
Fortunately KVM packages are already in Debian Etch repositories and KVM support is inbuilt in the latest kernels. Thus unless you explicitly did something , KVM modules should already be installed. you just need to install KVM user space programs. hence you can omit kvm-source in the following apt-get

since i always forget how to setup global variables as opposed to local variables one can setup in ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile, i thought of blogging it.
well , you need to put your entries in /etc/environment or /etc/profile
and the variable is available with all the shells that open for any user. But remember that the affect will appear only when you re-login.
for example i am default logged in to the system as user "X" , therefore when i started a new shell , i still could not access the variable. But when i switched to another user ,that user has the variable. But when i switched back(re-logged using su) to "X" then the variable became visible. of course for any already open shells you might need to source them.