running Linux at work with Windows apps

Bill Sconce sconce at in-spec-inc.com
Mon Nov 11 12:31:22 EST 2002


bscott at ntisys.com writes:

> On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, at 2:27pm, tom at buskey.name wrote:
>> VMware works *very* well for the occasional windows app.
>> You need decent hardware and RAM behind it.
> 
>   Also check out Win4Lin from NeTraverse.  It only supports 
>   Win95/98/ME (not NT/2000/XP), and does not provide as complete
>   an emulation as VMware, but at the same time, it has a
>    significantly smaller performance penalty.  
 

Please allow an enthusiastic agreement with Ben's suggestion. 

IMO, for the occasional Microsoft app(*) Win4Lin is the better fit.
VMWare is industrial-strength, suitable for operating-system developers,
and emulates a whole machine.  Good stuff, but heavyweight.  Win4Lin
does just what a desktop user needs. 

Try to picture:  you typically run Win4Lin as one of your desktops.
Lightweight.  User mode, where Microsoft stuff belongs.  Faster than
native Microsoft.  You're into and out of your Microsoft app(*) with
a click to another desktop.  When you don't need it you don't run it. 

I found Win4Lin absolutely indispensable during our changeover from
Microsoft, and Win4Lin's footprint was just the right fit.  Every
app we've thrown at it has worked.  (We'll use Wine when it's ready, but
evidently that will still be a while.  Wine still wouldn't run Improv as
of my last try, a week ago.) 

Win4Lin was a little more difficult to get working under Debian
(since a kernel compile was required) than it would be with Red Hat
or SuSe.  It was, however, unquestionably worth the trouble.  For
the common distributions it should be install-and-go. 

CrossOver is interesting, but specific to certain apps.  We totally
did not care about Microsoft Office, having NEVER used it.  CrossOver
may or may not have worked with Improv, WordPro, and the other funny
stuff we did use. 

There's also the matter of apps we pull down from the 'Net.  There's
an antenna coverage plotter, for instance; and the next free
special-interest program I pull down is likely to be Microsoft-API
too. 

For these apps, CrossOver, no;  Win4Lin, yes. 

Bill 

(*) These days I try to call that kind of sofware "Microsoft" or
"Microsoft-API".  "Microsoft" is a trade name unambiguously owned by
a well-known big company on the west coast. 

Like everyone, I used to use the term "Windows", but it's not clear
anymore whether the big company owns "Windows" as a trade name, nor
whether they will be allowed to continue using it. 

<hee, hee> 




More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list