I give in.

I've been running a few virtual machines in Server 2.0 on Ubuntu 9.04 on my Lenovo T500 laptop. It worked well enough when it was working. However, getting Server installed on the 64-bit version of Ubuntu requires some serious manual tweaks. I'd get it working fine, then the tempting offer of an update would cause me to break my instance.

<sigh>

Recompile, move files, cross fingers, get Server running again.

I don't have a real hope that moving to the supported/non-free version of VMware will really fix the issues given what I see in the VMware forums, but the fixes do seem to be easier to deal with.

I'll have to see if Windows 7 seems stable. I'd originally moved to Ubuntu on the perception that it would actually allow me to reliably control my hardware.