I downloaded 0.7 version of the vmware image, but when extracted it has no extension. I added .vmx and tried running it whit VMWare Player but it just says:

Error opening virtual machine /media/hdb7/MAEMO VMWARE IMAGE/maemo-sdk-0.7.vmx: File "/media/hdb7/MAEMO VMWARE IMAGE/maemo-sdk-0.7.vmx" line 1: Syntax error.

Tried redownloading the image, tried it undew windows and linux - no luck.

Any idea could I be doing something wrong?

Well, what I'm actually wanting is to virtually emulate the entire OS on my regular PC as though it's actually running on a real tablet. So unless there's something on the dev kit SDK that does that which I didn't see, I'm still gonna need that.