I may have. Been running Workstation under Knoppix for some 4 years (I think), under Linux for 12+ years..
The essential thing is VMware doesn't really care about service - they are in business, and we (me and people like me) are old, but rather uninteresting customers.
And they want to get money from us - the trouble with WS7 and new kernel was quite easily patched, for example, but they chose to correct it only in the new WS8, to milk some more money out of us..