For a long while my Windows 7 install inside VMWare 7 would get stuck at “expanding files 0%”. I kept thinking it was my machine and setup that was causing issue, after all a x64 tablet pc is not your most common config. Just in case anyone is curious I’ve got a Thinkpad x201t.

After trying both 32bit and 64bit Windows 7 version, upgrading my RAM from 4GB to 8GB and trying out changing the virtual disk location from ntfs to ext3 and back I was quickly running out of options.

Unfortunately VMWare support is extremely picky about your os versions and didn’t even try to suggest anything unless I downgraded to OpenSuse 11.2 – which was not an option due to certain driver compatibility.

Fortunately I decided to give it one more go and instead of using my external dvd drive for the Windows 7 installation I saved the DVD as iso and run the installation that way. And there you go, that was the solution!

My suspicion was the fact that my DVD drive is usb powered, however while looking for a solution I saw similar questions being asked for other linux hosts and no mention of external DVD drives, so it might be a more generic issue.

I have been recently converted to openSUSE, and after eagerly waiting for version 11 I finally got a chance to install it.

As usual it’s not 100% bulletproof yet, but luckily most things run straigh out of the box.

• The new installer is pretty sleek and does a very good job at configuring everything for you. One thing that annoyed me slightly was that it tries to mess with with my Windows partition, but this is easily overriden with the expert configuration screen.
• With the new kernel and new alsa the sound finally works. Still a bit fiddly though, to get it to work make sure you un-mute all the channels and set the playback to pcm. Also to get the microphone to work you need to enable the capture channels, otherwise, it sounds like it is working, but you will not be able to record anything
• Highly appreciated is the availability of the tablet pc settings in the graphics card configuration – under the tablet tab you just need to select “tablet pcs” and then the “lenovo x61 tablet pc” option. Remember to enable the pen and eraser in the “electronic pens” tab.
• I opted for kde4, as it seemed a good time to finaly give it a go. Addmitedly it looks a lot better than the last version I checked out, and it seems workable. One problem though is the knetworkmanager – the version from the install cd/dvd crashes when trying to setup wireless. There is an update already, though to get it you might need to connect to the internet using other means