Win4Lin Home Edition

[Benjamin Scott]

On Sat, 29 Jan 2005, at 1:29pm, sconce at in-spec-inc.com wrote:
> Win4Lin does that.  DOS based, lightweight, runs everything 16-bit Windows
> was able to run, requires a u$ OS license.

  Technical clarification:

  Win4Lin can also run Win95, Win98, and WinME, all of which are "32-bit" as
well.  Both in the sense of running in protect mode with a 32-bit flat
memory model (even Win 3.1 could do that, sort of), and in the sense of
using Microsoft's "Win32" API.

  The difference between Win 3x/95/98/ME and Win NT/2000/XP/2003 is that the
latter do not run on top of MS-DOS; they boot stand-alone with no other
operating system, and do everything in protected mode with native drivers.  
The former all use MS-DOS as a boot loader, and can fall back on 16-bit real
mode DOS/BIOS calls if they have to.

  Win4Lin (AKA "Merge") is, in fact, a virtual machine implementation, it is
just specific to a particular purpose: Running legacy DOS and/or Windows
programs.  Netraverse (nee TreLOS nee IBM nee DASCOM nee Platinum nee Locus)
doesn't bother implementing anything not needed for that.

> RE: Kenyon Karl's original post - thank you very much for that!  A price
> reduction is a good move for Win4Lin, and availability of cheaper
> pacifiers helps Linux.  $29.95 is a GOOD price.

  Yes indeed.  FWIW, I suspect Netraverse is going to start offering two
levels of pricing, one for "Win4Lin Home" which runs Win9X and is limited,
and one for "Win4Lin Pro", which can run WinNT (including 2000, XP, etc.).  
This is pure supposition on my part, but it makes sense given what I'm
currently seeing.

-- 
Ben Scott <bscott at ntisys.com>
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