Just compiled 3.8-rc2 on my test system, and the situation regarding NVIDIA and VMware is similar to -rc1..

For NVIDIA, the two ‘latest’ driver versions – 310.19 and 313.09 – fail to compile, but the earlier version – 310.14 – compiles OK..    Version 310.14 does not compile with kernel 3.7, so it would appear that the changes to the ‘later’ drivers for kernel 3.7 break compilation for 3.8..

For VMware, the same ‘softlink’ workaround as for 3.7 and later, still works..

# ln -s /usr/src/linux-3.8-rc2/include/generated/uapi/linux/version.h /usr/src/linux-3.8-rc2/include/linux/version.h
# vmware-modconfig –console –install-all

# uname -a
Linux rg6830l 3.8.0-rc2 #1 SMP Thu Jan 3 13:08:27 GMT 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

With -rc1, there were several ‘issues’..  and the fan on my HP laptop was running 100% of the time, which was not good..   I will now do some further test with -rc2, to see if these have been fixed!

Robert Gadsdon..   January 3rd, 2013.