[ltp] New Thinkpad and First Steps

[Paul Michael Reilly]

I am expecting a shiny new Z61p any day now.  Of course, it comes with 
Windows installed by default.  Past experience tells me that this time I 
had better generate the disk backups (and verify them) BEFORE I wipe the 
disk and install Fedora Rawhide --- I plead guilty to living on the 
bleeding edge, with much blood already spilled and more to come ... it 
hurts so good, :-)

I am toying with (re)installing the backups under VMWare, Zen or KVM 
(advice sought) but I seem to recollect that the backup mechanism 
trashes anything already on the disk, thus undoing my Fedora install. 
Can anyone confirm this and recommend how I can install the 
provided/licensed Lenovo Windows/XP system as a guest OS under one of 
the virtualized kernels?  I realize I could install Fedora as a guest 
and am consciously rejecting that idea primarily because I use many vts 
(Ctrl-Alt-Fx) which, unless I am seriously mistaken, is not viable from 
a guest OS.  Also, my heart lies with Linux.  It just adds stress to my 
life to have to deal with Windows for any more than to run Quicken 
occasionally (and I'll gladly accept recommendations of a Linux Quicken 
replacement --- I've had mixed result with Wine et.al.)

Thanks,

-pmr