I've been using SketchUp via VMWare Player for a while and the software just hangs now and then even after fixing the OpenGL support issue. I happen to have another PC running Windows 7. But I ran into the OpenGL problem again while trying to use remote desktop.

The VNC software I use is Remmina. After enabling remote desktop in my Windows 7 box, I tried to login using Remmina and open the SketchUp application. It pops up the same "Hardware acceleration is unsupported" error message.

After Googling around, I found OpenGL does not play well over VNC <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirtualGL>. I first tried TeamViewer <https://www.teamviewer.us/>, which almost works but with one showstopper: the mouse wheel down does not work. It is used a lot in SketchUp to span or rotate viewpoints, and is something I can definitely not live without.

Another route will be to add VirtualGL support to Remmina, which sounds a lot hassle.

Finally, I found that if I first physically login my Windows 7 machine and open the SketchUp app, then login using Remmina from my Ubuntu machine, SketchUp remains open and will happily run without any problem. For now I can live with it: just physically open the SketchUp app once and remember do not close it.

If for some reason you do not have physical access to the Windows machine, your next best bet would be TeamViewer.