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Linux Software

Review of VMWare Competitor 159

Posted by Hemos from the transitioning-the-world dept.
nontrivial writes "Linux Medical News has a decent review of Win4Lin, a MS Windows emulator. The article and submissions also touch on other solutions for having to run Windows applications. I use Win4Lin daily, and I must say it is rather spooky how well it works. The review doesn't spell it out, but Win4Lin 2.0 does include sound and serial and parallel support, and so far I've had no problems with the beta. It runs Windows in a SDI type interface, comes with DOS emulation, and can be run in many odd resolutions if you don't like running it in it's own virtual console. The bad news is that it technically requires a licensed copy of Windows (95, 98, etc, not NT), it is intended for business applications (so no DirectX support for example), and only TCP/IP networking is supported within the emulation. But overall it's stable (no more crashes than MS causes, and it doesn't take the whole box down when you see blue), it's fast (native speed), and it's cheap ($35). IMHO it's the best transition software I've used."
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VMWare Competitor

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  • actually - i think miracles are proprietary.


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network

  • MS Networking runs (on Win95/98) over NetBIOS which can be encapsulated in NetBEUI, IPX/SPX, and..... TCP/IP!

    Now, it may not support MS Networking, but it *SHOULD* if it truely supports TCP/IP as the protocol.

    --
    Ben Kosse

  • Re:Win4Lin Multi User over X (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    You just described 'even crappier terminal services' there, dude.

    Also, one would want to review the license of Win4Lin and verify that it's legal for multiple users to run it on a server. It's most certainly not legal for multiple users to run sessions in Office, or many other Windows packages concurrently.
  • I never said it didn't install. It just crashed repeatedly when I tried running the thing.

    I found it to be more hassle than I was prepared to spend, given that I keep a dedicated Windows machine on my home network anyway.

    *shrug*
  • The "explaination" /is/ terrible, isn't it?
  • Here is how I use it:

    I setup a heterogeneous 3-tiered system at a client's office. Linux runs the app-server, Postgresql, etc on a raid 5 box. All the workstations are Win95, NT, etc. I wrote the server software on the Linux box and the client software on the Windows boxes. How do I support all this stuff? On my laptop with VMWare.

    I have a Dell Inspiron 7500 w/192 MB running Mandrake. I have the same app-server, Postgresql, etc. running on it as runs on the raid 5 server. I have Win98 running on VMWare and all the client software running on it. I can develop, debug, and test right on the laptop. The only change I have to make when I deploy is to change the server IP number to the real server (which I keep in a text config file) - *everything* else is the same.

    If you have a similar situation, then VMWare is the killer app for Linux. I highly recommend it.

    -tim
  • What is this utility, and where can I get it?

    I can't remember what it's called - I'll look it up on Friday night and post it as a reply to this comment. It was on the cover of last month's PCPlus magazine in the UK. I can't find it on their web site.

  • NO BROWSER STANDARDS! is the reason I use vmware. I develop web applications that must be available in any browser from lynx to Mozilla beta xx.

    Here is what I used to do:

    Setup a lab:
    • 1 win95 box with 2.x browsers
    • 1 win95 box with 3.x browsers
    • 1 win98 box with 4.x browsers
    • 1 winnt box with 4.x browsers
    • 1 win98 box with 5.x browsers
    • 1 winnt box with 5.x browsers
    • 1 mac with 3.x browsers
    • 1 mac with 4.x browsers
    • 1 mac with 5.x browsers
    • 1 *nix box with 3.x and 4.x browsers
    Here is what I have now:
    • 1 box with each one of those systems in vmware session.
    • 1 mac with 3.x browsers
    • 1 mac with 4.x browsers
    • 1 mac with 5.x browsers
    The virtual display drivers in vmware are not perfect. But I only have to maintain 8 (4 test, 2 servers, and 2 development machines), instead of 14 (10 test, 2 servers 2 development machines).

    Now If I could only emulate macs...
  • There's a utility for Windows that allows you to browse an ex2fs partition and copy files to and from it.

    What is this utility, and where can I get it?

    Here it is: href="http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linu x/ [swin.edu.au]

  • 1) Testing web interfaces in various browsers for compatibility.
    2) Tools like Rational Rose 2000 and ERwin only run under Windows at this point.
    3) Test runtime environments for software installation.

    Incidentally, for one of the posters above, HP makes an Outlook-compatible mail reader for Unix OSes.



    Regards,
  • It does work on Slack (just create the whole /etc/rc.d/rc0.d...rc6.d folder hierarchy, then install) - but I'm very pissed off by their explanation: "it's not a supported distribution because of its unusual directory layout". Huh? I say all of the other distros have a weird layout...
  • But I doubt that NVidia or 3DFX are going to let someone emulate thier hardware. VMWare installs video drivers as a VMWare video card (last time I installed it) and uses SB16 compatiable drivers for sound cards. Networking is also handled by a "standard" network driver. I'm sure that they could figure out how to drive DirectX on these drivers, but the performance would prolly not be what you're trying to get with DirectX.

    If the games are that important, dual boot for them, but let's let VMWare do it's job updating to support business apps better/faster.

  • Not to mention the whole OS/2 mess - the current status being that vmware actively checks for OS/2 and refuses to run it.
  • you have to install a patch to your current kernel.

    am i the only one that's a little nervous about installing a kernel update from a third party vendor (who's software i'm only trying to EVALUATE)

    and so i go back to my nightly prayers..."Yeah, though i walk through the valey of the shadow of death, i fear no company from redmond, for i knoweth Sierra will developeth linux clients for upcoming games" cough *Counter-Strike* cough. (wine just ain't cuttin' it.)


    FluX
    After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
  • Lotus Notes
    I guess we were many people here expecting this kind of software to get rid of windows.
    (BTW, these 2 words could have also been Microsoft Exchange).
    Of course, we might have to troubleshoot some kernel stuff at all but the fact its openness makes it possible is also the reason why we love Linux, no ? The future is bright.
    --
  • Since it doesn't do a virtual machine, it simply doesn't compare. I use VMware to test out new server configurations, different OSs (Netware, FreeBSD, NT 4) etc. Being able to keep a whole virtual hard disk in a file means I can throw away a bolluxed system and return to an earlier version. The fact that VMware can save the changes made to a disk during a session then then merge or discard them at the end gives me that miracle - a Windows installation that never fscks itself. I just power up the Windows session, do what I need then turn it straight off without shutting down, knowing that all the crap Windows wrote to the registry and the disk is evaporating. Very useful, since a lot of my day is spent in User Support.
  • Oh, I can think of some reasons: For one, the company I work for uses Outlook + Exchange for groupware. So everyone is required to use these programs. However, I'm a Linux/FreeBSD sysadmin, so I run Linux on my desktop, with VMWare running so I can use Outlook. Another reason: when installing new software on our servers (I work for an ISP), we want to be absolutely sure that we don't run into any unexpected problems. Therefore we usually test upgrades and patches on a virtual machine in VMWare. A third reason: for developers of distributions like Debian, it is a nice way to test the new boot floppies and installation program, without having to reinstall your machine after you're done or when you find out that it did not work.
  • True... although you need a really fast machine with a lot of memory if you want to run PhotoShop in VMWare. (or a lot of patience of course).
  • Exactly the point. We are using VMware to do port of application on 4 platforms and test them on various Linux distributions, BSD's, etc. Also, to test new potentially harmful package, you just clone your VMwared redhat istallation, try it, if it breaks something you don't even need backups. In fact, we almost never run windows on our VMware installs, most of the time it's various BSDs and Linuxes and occasionally Solaris.
    VMware is not just windows emulator. It's very convenient tool to run multiple OSes on signle hardware, and I must note it does it really well.
  • I think it can - I know Windows isn't network aware [unless you're talking Terminal Server] but there's no reason you couldn't build these capabilities on screen - its not perfect, but it should be OK.

    VNC can pole the screen and send updates of the active Window [or other components] down the wire. I'm proposing a similar system, but with some small modifications.
  • Hmm... say we scroll a page of graphics in a maximised window. That means almost all of a, say, 1024x768x32bit screen is changing. That's 3MB per screenful. Lets say we have a 10Mbit network. That means that we get a screen update about every 2 seconds if we saturate the network. Maybe 2 frames/second with good compression (lots of CPU time).
    A bit impractical?
  • It seems you haven't used remote display technologies particularly feasibe. There's a whole stack of protocols designed to reduce that screen display to shapes and text. It's entirely worksable to surf the web from a remote machine over a 10Mb link. I know this because I did it for half a year.

    Remote screen display technologies don't sent compressed images, they sent shapes, text, and bitmaps where appropriate. What will travel down the wire is instructions to draw vector rectangles, compressed bitmaps, and perhaps bevels and widgets if you're protocol got brains.

    Over a 10Mb link veiwing web pages in VNC is quite reasonable [especially with the hextile modification for smarter compression].
  • Currently, vmware actively checks at startup for OS/2 and refuses to run it if found as guest.
  • It's one thing to be against software patents. I am on the grounds that the examiners have proven repeatedly that they have no idea of what is obvious, what is standard useage, etc. This doesn't mean I don't think anything deserves protection. It means I consider the government incompetent (assuming that they intend to protect valid inventions), and that the cost of allowing them to continue is higher than the cost of repealing the provision.

    So: What has VMWare patented? Was it obvious? Was it standard usage? (How does it differ from an interpreter?) etc. Without knowing that, I have no basis for judging whether or not I think that they have no right to a patent. And I have neither researched it, nor heard anyone saying that they didn't deserve it (except on "No Software Patents!" grounds).

  • Does Atheos boot in VMWare now? The last time I checked, it wouldn't - it became stuck at the yellow startup screen.

  • Weird, alternate-universe Slashdot site. (Score:4)

    by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @10:28PM (#802294)

    I clicked on the link in the story above, and it took a second, so I went to get a glass of water. When I got back, I had warped into some alternate universe slashdot.

    It took me a while to realize THAT WAS the link, and they were just using slashcode. Oh well, it was trippy while it lasted.

  • I may well check this out, since, VMware don't support my distibutions of choice (Slackware) and it didn't work anyway.
  • Now If I could only emulate macs...

    You can, to a certain extent (68k machines only, and only up to OS 8.1): check Basilisk II [uni-mainz.de]. Should do the trick for 3rd and 4th generation browsers.

  • Comparison with VMWare (Score:4)

    by TeVi ( 128093 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @10:29PM (#802297) Homepage
    Comparing Win4Lin with VMWare is not quite fair: Win4Lin is a Windows emulator, while VMWare emulates an i386. Thus, VMWare is a much more powerful tool than Win4Lin, since VMWare can do more that run Windows applications: it runs Windows itself, or any other OS which runs on an i386.
  • While I'm not ready to rush out and install the software as I rarely use VMware these days, I have to say that the ability to toggle between a Linux and Win4Lin desktop in full-screen mode does sound tempting... the claim of lower resource consumption sounds nice too.

    ...and kudos to LMN for a clean implementation of SlashCode!

  • Games (Score:2)

    by treke ( 62626 )

    I wonder when someone's gonna come out with some form of DirectX support in one of these Windows Emulators/Virtual Machines. It might not be able to cut it for a lot of 3d games, but I'm sure there are many games that don't tax the system nearly as much like The Sims, Star Craft, other games. Now that XFree86 4.0 is supporting 3d better it might even be possible to get decent 3d support in the virtual machine enabling older 3d games like Everquest, Half Life, etc. Someone who wants the extreme speed would be willing to reboot, but some of us wouldn't mind being able to grab a quick game whenever the temptation hit us, and not have to worry about things like other users or currently running applications.


    treke

  • Wouldn't it make a bit more sense to run a Mac/68k emulator directly from within Linux?

  • Not VMWares Competitor (Score:3)

    by Wolfbaine ( 116306 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @10:37PM (#802301)

    It seems like Win4Lin is more a competitor for WINE than VMWare, in that it interacts with windows software at a much higher level. Whilst details are sketchy, the site [trelos.com] gives the impression that it doesnt emulate the full hardware.

    For instance, the line:
    The Win4Lin software package consists of a set of server processes, kernel hooks and drivers. These facilities combine to create a tightly integrated environment between Linux and Windows.
    gives the impression that it preprocesses the running software to allow it to run.

    In fact the key difference between Win4Lin and MAME is that it uses a real copy of Windows to provide the libraries and bugs.

  • Not a real VM (Score:4)

    by kingjohn ( 76100 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @10:39PM (#802302) Homepage
    The main disadvantage of Win4Lin compared to VMWare seems to be that it is not a real virtual machine, which makes it impossible to run anything else than Windows. Since VMWare is capable or running Linux on Linux, it can be used for kernel development and other dangerous stuff. It can also run other OS's such as Solaris or OS2.

    I also wonder if the use of Win4Lin doesn't make your system vulnerable to Windows viruses (such as macro viruses in Word): since these applications now have access to your Linux file systems, they can easily destroy your data.
  • Imagine you need to port your product to all platforms running on i386 and test it. You should test on some 10 Linuxes (including 2-years old stock of all major distributions), on all BSDs, on Solaris x86. How many workstations you need to do this simultaneously? How convenient is to reboot them each time, to administrate them, etc.? How many time you waste on all those reboots? VMware is not for "Windows on Linux", it's for "many OSes on one hardware". And since current hardware reached the level that you can do this (if you don't intend to play Quake, just run some make's and gcc's), it's very good we have a product that does it.

  • Re:Comparison with VMWare (Score:3)

    by WhyteRabbyt ( 85754 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @11:59PM (#802304) Homepage

    Genuine technical query : If Win4Lin is only an emulator, why does it need a genuine copy of Windows? Why does it only provide a subset of the actual physical hardware, the way VMWare does? In other words, why isnt it the 'Win4Lin Virtual PC' on Trelo's "how it works diagram" actually a virtual machine.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Don't adjust your television!
    They control the horizontal!
    They control the vertical!
  • Hmmm, interesting... If you put Win4Lin on a Linux server and one of those X servers for Windows onto networked Windows workstations, you could use the Linux server to serve up Windows applications to the Windows workstations, no crappy Terminal Services needed.
  • Those are indeed nice issue's allthough I still can't understand why your company would invest in VMWare while they could also make sure that you can grab your email from their server using pop3 instead of the need for Exchange (in other words; thats how I would have done it :-)). Offcourse this isn't a perfect situation when you need to be able to access specific stuff like house style emails and such, but being a developer like you said I somehow doubt that this would be the case.

    If this just involves yourself I can see your point. But if this is the case for more, say 5 and up, I would consider it a waste of money.

  • Win4Lin is not like Vmware!
    Vmware is its own little virtual computer, you can install windows on it, get pissed, install BSD, format, then install BEOS, and VMware would never know the difference, because its its own little computer complete with a Bios and everything!

    Win4Lin is like Wine, you can run singular applications like word or Excel, or IE.
    Here is a link that might help people sort it out
    Win4Lin Whitepaper [trelos.com]
    -
    -
    -

  • Personally I'm sick and tired of ignorant users complaining about lack of DirectX/3D support in Linux. Why? Because even Microsoft has issues with DirectX/3D support in NT/2000. In Windows NT/2000, the game must be mainly OpenGL-based or, in the case of 2000, use the newer DirectX versions that are suppored. If Microsoft cannot even get it's own products to work with its own, alternate, lesser-used OS, how the freak do you think Linux will???

    You see, DirectX was originally little more than a set of function wrappers to direct hardware and, gulp, DOS-like memory mapped I/O! Hence, the problem with NT. By DirectX 6, Microsoft finally realized that an API for unprotected memory and hardware access was a BAD idea and finally started migrating DirectX to a protected state.

    Still, implementation in Windows 2000 is far from perfect, but I'm sure DirectX 8 will improve on a lot things. Since Microsoft isn't licensing it's DirectX code, I seriously doubt anyone will be able to product a hardware-accelerated DirectX implementation very soon. And even if they managed to reverse engineer some of it, it would be hard to keep up with Microsoft's constant changes.

    So quit asking for the impossible! Lobby software vendors to support DRI. If anything, I'd made the selling point that UNIX vendors don't change half the function names and parameters every freak'n version release! [ God that pisses me off Microsoft! ]

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • Actually I was planning to try Atheos this weekend. I assumed it would work - but graphics support is a bit dodgy on non-supported platforms, so I can believe it doesn't. It is a shame as Atheos warns that the native FS is beta and using it might trash your drive. A virtual environment is definately the way to try something like that out. Anyone know if it works in Bochs?
  • What we really need is a general-purpose X86 processor emulator for Linux; Something I can compile on an Alpha box and then load *any* X86-based system into it and expect it to run.
  • If you're talking about replacing Windows PCs, then the cost of Windows is effectively free, since you've already got the license you were using on the PC itself before it became a Linux desktop... If you're talking about legacy apps, it's a sure bet you've got at least a few already-paid-for copies of Windows lying about...
  • Win4Lin retails at $35.

    VMWare retails for $300.

    If I'm only using it for casual Office use and other such sundries (solitaire), then the choice is already made for me.

  • If people would bother to read the white paper on vmware [vmware.com] before they post their replies, they might see that trelos' idea of a virtual machine is very different from vmware.

    The two products are in no way comparable.

  • I'm not that happy about installing a closed-source setuid-root program. Anyone know what exactly it needs to do ? How can I keep control of it ?

    Run it inside vmware...? (I'll get me coat)


    --
  • Three reasons why I use VMWare:

    1. Networking -- Having an entire network to myself would be really nice, but unfortunately, I don't always have that at my disposal. With VMWare, I boot up two or three virtual machines running various OSs and then see how my program fares when running on something close to a real network, not just loopback.
    2. OS Development -- I recently started messing around with writing my own kernel, and VMWare has been indispensible. Having to dd to a floppy and rebooting some machine every time I change a line of code gets old really fast. VMWare has this neat feature that it can use any file as your floppy device, not just /dev/fd0, so I can muck around in my VMWare window and at the same time see where exactly in my code things are going bad. I really don't see any sensible way to write a bootloader and kernel without VMWare.
    3. It lets me play around with other OSs that I really don't want to run, but I would like to see how they work, like the various BSDs, x86 Solaris, etc.

      I guess some people still need to run bl0ated windows software for some reason, but VMWare lets you do a whole lot more than that. As for your point about developing in a simulated environment, yes you probably wouldn't want to release code that you never ran on a real machine, but in some instances VMWare just saves a lot of time -- you don't lose your editor when your machine goes down (happened a lot to me in Visual Dev.) and you don't have to keep jumping from keyboard to keyboard when writing a network application in an environment where ssh is not an option.

      This has not been a paid endoresement, I just really like this program.

  • I just actually read that page a Linked to, and I was wrong!
    Win4Lin IS like a virtual machine, it has its own bios and everything, I just didn't read far enough down the page,
    Please forgive me

    p.s Its Microsofts 25th Anniversary, everyone,
    BOO BOO BOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • You should test on some 10 Linuxes (including 2-years old stock of all major distributions), on all BSDs, on Solaris x86.

    But how can you be sure that it works if you rely on a virtual environment over the real thing? When your virtual environment has a bug somewhere there is a change you mistake it for a bug in your software. Then what? Ease of use isn't everything. Suppose you were faced with the situation I just mentioned; then it would take you a tremendous amount of time finding & solving your problem(s) while you could have prevented this when using the real thing.

  • Add VNC Server? Cost vs. NTTS CALs? Illegal use? (Score:3)

    by BitMan ( 15055 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @12:26AM (#802319)

    VNC Server = "Universal Solution"?

    In addition to remote display via X to other UNIX/X clients, I suppose you could run multiple VNC servers on the Linux with this program running under some of them -- and pump it to other, non-Windows platforms with a VNC viewer but no X support (e.g., Mac, Win3.x, VMS, DOS, etc...). Hmmm, anyone care to try it?

    ~$150/copy of Windows vs. ~$X/CAL for NT Termainl Server / Citrix WinFrame?

    Now when it comes to "cost effectiveness", if you're paying ~$150 per user/session, isn't that a heck of a lot more than CAL (client access licenses) for NT Terminal Server or Citrix WinFrame? Let's say you could license Windows on a "concurrent basis", would it not still be more expensive? Heck, Microsoft might license Windows exactly for virtual machines at a much higher price for that reason.

    Illegitimate use of Windows 9x?

    So at what point does Microsoft limit your use of their Windows 9x products with their EULA? Could they not outlaw you from using it in such a manner, or say your "right-to-use" (RTU) license doesn't cover it??? They could claim their is "no way to enforce proper licensure because you can run multiple copies". Heck, they might even sue Telos (even though their product doesn't have anything to do with such "misuse" -- although that didn't stop the Napster verdict ;-). I'd say they'd do any or all of this if it gave their NT Terminal Server some "competition".

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • Exchange is more than e-mail. As I said, we use groupware a *lot*: shared calenders, public folders for files and messages, etc. Pop3 isn't enough then.

  • Win4Lin is not like Vmware! Vmware is its own little virtual computer, you can install windows on it....Win4Lin is like Wine, you can run singular applications like word or Excel, or IE

    From the whitepaper: Win4Lin delivers Windows application support by providing a virtual machine environment to execute native Windows 95/98. Because Windows is actually running on the system, application support is very comprehensive. Most applications will simply install and perform as expected

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Oh sod. Didnt see your followup. Apologies.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Exactly. A real competitor would be the Wine Project [winehq.com]
    It is also a Windows Emulator, does not need any windows dll's and is fairly advanced (version 1.0 will probably be released this year).
    It is a volontary open-source effort, with some support from Corel and others.

  • Win4Lin Virtual Machine - read the WhitePaper (Score:3)

    by WhyteRabbyt ( 85754 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @01:01AM (#802324) Homepage

    Ive seen a few comments already about Win4Lin being unlike VMWare because its not a Virtual Machine. If people would care to read the whitepaper [trelos.com], then think before they post their little replies they'd find out that

    It IS a virtual machine

    It requires a copy of 95 or 98 to run Windows apps

    It has its own BIOS

    It provides a virtual hardware profile

    In other words, its pretty damn similar to the way VMWare is set up.

    Pax,

    White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++

  • Dude, I think you miss the point that even with the source code to Windows, DirectX, etc..., Microsoft still cannot get Windows 2000 compatible with many Windows 9x games!

    Given that simple fact, just HTF do you expect Linux developers to implemented something that could very well be impossible from a compatibility standpoint (given the current design of DirectX) when they have to reverse engineer it in the first place -- even before they make it compatible?!?!?!

    Dude -- a quick trip to FreeDOS-land will show you how hard it is to reverse engineer compatibility with a crappy design!

    Your argument only has validity when comparing native Linux games to native Win9x games. Your argument should be to lobby software vendors to write native Linux games instead of native Win9x games. I really think you miss the whole scope of the problem.

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • Good point! Didn't look at it that way.

    -- Bryan "TheBS" Smith

  • I've talked to a number of folks who use VMWare basically to run Windows, and that's kinda how VMWare markets its product, so, yeah, it's a fair comparison.

    While the focus of Win4Lin is different, and the implementation is different, if all one wants is Windows apps without rebooting, it's a fair comparison.
    • It seems like Win4Lin is more a competitor for WINE than VMWare
    VMware are Win4Lin are competing for your hard earned cash, they are commercial products, not OSS, and are designed to offer maximum support for running Windows apps under Linux, by actually running the M$ Win32 libraries, one way or another. Wine has an agenda. It is as much about freedom (as in OSS) as it is about running solitaire - for the Wine project requiring a copy of Windows would be akin to selling its soul, and being free of M$ code is worth compatability being sub 100%.

    I know what you mean, but I think that while it is accurate to say that Win4Lin is in many ways technically closer to Wine, the two projects have sufficiently different goals not be real competitors.

    • For instance, the line: ..... gives the impression that it preprocesses the running software to allow it to run.
    Uh no, I don't agree. [no flame; jus' an opinion]

    Put simply, you have 3 things in Windows:

    1. A syscall interface
    2. A set of API's running on top of this
    3. Drivers to access the hardware.
    If Trelos provide a new traphandler to emulate the windows syscall interface (#1), and the set of drivers to emulate the hardware from within Linux (#3), then the APIs are the only M$ code they are using, and this should run fine on the traphandler that Trelos has provided, no need to modify the code.

    cheers,
    G

  • But for something like VMWARE to support DirectX for 3d is not anywhere near as difficult as you would like to make out.

    VMWare emulates at hardware level. That means that what they have to emulate is something like a TNT or Voodoo chipset.

    That way you install Win98 on your vmware machine and it promptly detects that you have a TNT2, and starts sending polygon data to it - which linux's OpenGL then renders.

    That still requires that DirectX works in the MS os too tho.

  • Re:I don't see the point alltogether (Score:3)

    by DrSkwid ( 118965 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @03:09AM (#802339) Journal
    simple one this

    Internet Explorer

    All the best tools for web site creation are OSS.
    But you need to test it on IE before release.

    Plus Flash tools I expect (not my area but enough people round here live inside Flash)

    anyone with some sense would choose the right product for the right job. I know I would

    Dual/triple booting is a pain and something such as this means I don't have to.

    I've not tried it yet but it means I should be able to happily run plan9 on my desktop and use VNC to attach to the Linux server from where I can run Win4Lin and run IE and friends.

    Heck I don't even have to use my own CPU cycles.

    This product has almost made my day. Just got to persuade someone here to risk $35 on it. (and seeing as I refused Photoshop and use Gimp I just saved the suits $400 so it's payback time :)


    .oO0Oo.
  • I'm not that happy about installing a closed-source setuid-root program.

    I agree that the ideal would be for it to be a)OSS or b)non-root, but if both of the above are non-optional, then consider the alternative: dual boot to windows, and any windows app can directly access the hardware and fandango on your linux partition if it wants to. There's a utility for Windows that allows you to browse an ex2fs partition and copy files to and from it.

  • How.. (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @03:22AM (#802342)
    is this a VMWare competitor? Just because Linux users use VMWare to run windows?

    Does Win4Lin let you install other OS's on it? run multiple concurrent VMs?
  • To be completely correct, VMWare doesn't 'emulate' the x86, it virtualizes it.

    Specifically, it virtualizes whatever processor you have (it's not limited to i386)
  • Because we
    1) Like to use linux as a platform but
    2) Are developing softwar for Windows because that's what we get paid to do?

    and
    3) because certain groupware packages are needed in some corporate environments that only work on windows? (outlook)

  • A good emulator may hurt Linux (Score:3)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @03:41AM (#802346)
    Back in the days when I was a happy OS/2 Warp user, I thought it was a great thing that you could run Windows 3.1 applications while running Warp...you could buy Warp with a Windows license or install Windows yourself if you already owned it, and launch Windows as a separate Warp application. The problem was, the fact that you could run Windows applications totally removed any incentive for developers to port those apps to the Warp environment, so they never were ported. Why port an app to OS/2 if you aknow they can already run it as a Windows application ? Note, this was at a time when there were quite a few OS/2 users and it might well have made business sense to port to OS/2 EVEN IF OS/2 COULD NOT RUN WINDOWS APPS. So Warp users were stuck with running Windows applications IN Windows (with its attendant instabilities within the Windows session), as well as paying for a Windows license. Meanwhile, Windows users who wanted to run Windows applications but MIGHT have been interested in running Warp really had no reason to do so. So if you wanted to run an application that ran under Windows, there was never going to be a compelling reason to move to OS/2, since it would never be ported to the OS/2 environment. My point is, if users are able to run Windows apps within Linux, why would we ever expect developers to provide us with Linux native versions of those apps ? The availablity of a good Windows emulator can only retard Linux's viability as a desktop OS for the masses in the long run.

  • Re:Comparison with VMWare (Score:5)

    by barracg8 ( 61682 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @01:50AM (#802357)
    Okay, I'll step up and give this one a go. Here is a pretty complete summary of what VMs are all about, and a guess at how Win4Lin works differenly (based on their white paper):

    Most modern processors offer 2(+) modes of operation, which break down to Kernel mode and User mode. In kernel mode you have all the instructions that you have in user mode, plus a few more (sensative stuff, e.g. setting up virtual memory tables). An OS expects to start running in kernel mode, as it expects to run directly on the hardware.

    A VM runs the enite OS in user mode. This means that whenever the OS tries to do any real work, it will try to execute a kernel mode instruction, and as it is running in user mode it is not permitted to execute it, and an exeption occurs. The VM should trap this, produce the appropriate behaviour, (eg, if the OS tried to read a byte in from the keyboard buffer it sould be passed a character from the VM applications event queue), and return to the OS code as if the instruction had be executed in hardware as normal. Clear? :-)

    Also, in real machines there is often memory mapped IO, so if I write to a particular memory address I expect graphics/text to appear on the screen. The VM should produce appropriate behaviour for that.

    So what VMware does:

    • It provides software such that programs that are designed to run in x86 kernel mode (ie, an OS) can be run in x86 user mode, and whenever a kernel mode instruction turns up in the code it kindof 'virtually executes' it.
    • It provides low level emulation of memory mapped IO, such that standard Windows VGA graphics drivers will work, as it is actually emulating the graphics hardware.
    Right. Now how Win4Lin works.

    In windows, put simply you have three things:

    1. A system call interface
    2. A set of APIs that run on this
    3. The hardware drivers
    The VMware approach to running window is: to emulate the x86, and the standard hardware devices, e.g. VGA graphics card, then run the stanard windows kernel and device drivers on to of this VM, and to run the Win32 API on top of them as usual.

    With Win4Lin, they provide their own implementation of the Windows system call interface (equivalent in function to the Windows kernel) to run within Linux (I think this is done in the Linux kernel, as it it a replacement interupt handler), and they provide their own drivers for windows to use, eg graphics cards drivers to make calls to X, rather than to try to write directly to a VGA graphics card. They then run the Win32 API code directly onto of their 'kernel', not on the standard windows one. It cuts out a couple of layers, a lot of unnecassary exceptions, and some inefficient device emulation out of the picture, that VMware uses.

    Hope this helps.

    cheers,
    G

  • So what VMware does

    Is patented [slashdot.org]. Which is why this program uses sort of a cross between Wine and VMWare.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • I downloaded it and was running through the README, and it looks like it wants to replace your kernel....

    Personally, I'm not going to install kernels handed out by software publishers, or there would be no point in building your own.

  • I also wonder if the use of Win4Lin doesn't make your system vulnerable to Windows viruses (such as macro viruses in Word): since these applications now have access to your Linux file systems, they can easily destroy your data.

    Only if it runs as root. The article over on LMN (which is running squishdot, a slash clone for zope) doesn't say one way or the other.


    <O
    ( \
    XGNOME vs. KDE: the game! [8m.com]
  • Agreed, Exchange is *far* beyond pop3 email. We use it to register all of our dem osoftware downloaders, and their information from the forms they fill out becomes a contact within a public folder accessible to all of the salespeople.

    Outlook is the main reason that I need a windows environment available, but we also have some MS DNS servers, an IIS server and all of our hosted sites are connected to MS SQL. It's nice to be able to just fire up a Windows session to use the management tools.

    As the administrator for a w2k network, it's very nice to not have to use it myself :]

  • Complaints. (Score:3)

    by mindstrm ( 20013 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @04:40AM (#802372)
    It's neat to see it... even if it's closed source... in fact, I couldn't care less if it was or not.. however...

    1) Won't work on SMP systems.
    2) No protocols besides TCP/IP (can deal with this.. but...)
    3) Lots of 'features' are listed for the v2.0, which is not yet available.

    When it comes of age, and sound works, networking has raw access to ethernet for other protocols, and I can use it on my smp system (yes, I know that 9x won't do smp, that's fine).... then I'm game.

  • I also wonder if the use of Win4Lin doesn't make your system vulnerable to Windows viruses (such as macro viruses in Word): since these applications now have access to your Linux file systems, they can easily destroy your data.

    It CAN make you vulnerable depending on how it is set up. In the Win4Lin configuration, you specify directory trees in Linux that Win4Lin will map to windows drives. In order to avoid compromising your Linux system, those trees should be used ONLY for Windows. Something like /var/w4l-drives/drive_d for example.

    Win4Lin will not install a 'personal Windows' for root with good reason. It should NEVER be run as root. It has a two part installation. The first part is done as root, which unpacks the binaries, verifies that the drivers exist, and loads an image of the Windows installation CD. The second part is run by the user that wants a virtual windows (root is not allowed to run this part of the set-up). That part creates a virtual drive c for the user in their home directory and runs the setup program from the Windows image (complete with entering the product ID number).

    Win4Lin is to some extent a VM. It is able to run many DOS applications out of the box. It replaces at least the display driver and winsock.dll with versions that make calls to Win4Lin for virtualized services.

    A few things like ping, Network Neighborhood and shared folders do not work under Win4Lin because those do not go through winsock. There's nothing to do about ping and Network Neighborhood, but the shared folders limitation can be worked around by using SAMBA to mount the shares under linux and configuring the mountpoints to be virtual drives in Win4Lin.

    It is a trade-off. VMWare is more complete, but Win4Lin is cheaper and faster.

  • If you would only use VMWare to emulate win95 or win98 then this alternative would seem to offer a better solution. Because it works differently, it takes up much less memory.

    However, I use VMWare for testing new Linux, BSD or NT setups, or for playing with BeOS, Atheos, QNX or whatever else is around. You cannot do these things with Win4Lin as it is designed just to give a windows replacement.

  • Bah. VMWare will work fine on Slackware... just trick it into thinking you have those rc.d directories it's looking for (or rather, have them, and then delete them after it installs if you so desire) and it'll install fine. It runs nicely on Slack.
  • Having spent a good few hours yesterday finding out just what it was going to take to join some of my colleagues in a game of Unreal, I can tell you that wine does support DirectX 5 anyway, and that unreal delivered windows level performance (i.e. it was perfectly playable at reasonable resolutions) on my non-3d accelerated Linux box. The only unfortunate thing was I ended up having to point my wine.conf to the Win98 drive on my PC (which was brought into VMWare about a month ago and hasn't natively booted since).

  • Win4Lin Multi User over X (Score:4)

    by SmilieZ ( 3862 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @10:56PM (#802381) Homepage
    One of the other not so obvious features of
    Win4Lin, is that it runs REALLY well over Remote X. (Ie to Thin Client Terminals) And with Win4Lin 2 having multi-user functionality, you can run a nice little enterprise server for Thin clients, where you deliver say StarOffice for their main Office functionality, peppered with any legacy apps they need using Win4Lin. I have a few sites using something similar to this now. It really changes the "Desktop" option from being "Forget it" to.. "Hey.. we could do that" for most organisations. And once were on the desktop.. it makes it MUCH easier to migrate away thoes old Legacy apps.. and eventually not have win4lin at all!..

    Anthony
  • Uh, thank you for ringing in. It is not my decision that they use w2k, it was a voted-upon issue, and management does not yet trust linux on the workstations, generally due to the IDE choices of the developers.

    I always have a w2k/nt4 box at my desk, as well as a linux box. Often I have all 3.

    Thanks for being judgemental though. It's such a rarity at /. that it's always refreshing to see.
    • Don't we need a lot of people stomping around and fuming about VMWare being patented software? Shouldn't there be a boycott of it?
    No.

    yerricde is a troll. On VMware's website [vmware.com], they talk about 'patent-pending technologies', but they are not acually stupid enough to try to patent VMs. Unfortunately, Flash VOS Inc. [flashvos.com] are that damn stupid. VOS have patented IBM's VM [ibm.com] technology from, uh, like the 60s. (great stuff, and still in great use; plus, this is what was used to run 40,000 copies of Linux on a [recursively VM'd :-) ] partition of a IBM S/390)

    Flash VOS: can you guys not spell prior art?
    Or are you just so atracted to your patent lawyers, you like giving them money for the fun of it?

    Nothing to worry about here.

    cheers,
    G

  • The Win4Lin platform seems extremely stable - no crashes or freezes at all

    is a quote from the marketing team over at trelos, i highly doubt that this is really that stable concedering that is appears from this diagram [trelos.com] that this app runs in linux kernal space. Not such a good idea, if your interested in stabilty.

    I could be completly wronge here, but if it does indeed use MS code, and runs in kernel space, i can't imagine this setup being very stable.

    Another point to make is that this is a comercial product. (way) not GPL.

    -Jon

  • I have both... (Score:5)

    by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Wednesday September 06, 2000 @02:42AM (#802395) Homepage
    ...and both are worth it.

    1. VMWare - Runs almost any x86 OS. VMs can be created on Linux or NT, some rumor of BSD folks using it -- though I'm not certian. Patches the kernel by using a set of loadable modules. Very compatable. Check the news groups: vmware.*.

      Win4Lin - Only Win9x at this time. Only runs on Linux. Fairly compatable. Sound support added to beta releases. Very low memory footprint. Patches kernel directly; no module support. Check the mailing lists: www.trelos.com.

    Neither support advanced video or specialized hardware. In the case of Win4Lin, the sound support is only available in the beta and is not entirely stable or complete. (I could not record with it, for example, but that might be my fault.)

    The kernel patches are available, but aren't the same. Because of that, your kernel may/may not be supported by either VMWare or Win4Lin. If it's not supported, these programs won't run! For bleeding edge kernel releases, use VMWare. It is more likely to have kernel modules available when you need them. There are security issues since these are propriatory extentions, though the kernel modifications are available as source.

    Having said that, I intend to buy two more copies of Win4Lin for my family as gifts. For business use, I would be more cautious and prefer VMWare unless Win4Lin worked with a specific Windows-only application and memory was tight.

    Both have full-featured, time limited, trial versions available for download, so the risk is minimal.

    As always, if there's a Linux software available...that gets the nod over VMware or Win4Lin.

  • Now when it comes to "cost effectiveness", if you're paying ~$150 per user/session, isn't that a heck of a lot more than CAL (client access licenses) for NT Terminal Server or Citrix WinFrame?

    Possably for large scale deployment, but for a small office/personal use, Win4Lin + an existing copy of Win98 will be cheaper.

    So at what point does Microsoft limit your use of their Windows 9x products with their EULA? Could they not outlaw you from using it in such a manner, or say your "right-to-use" (RTU) license doesn't cover it???

    I wouldn't be surprised if they tried that in the future, but existing copies allow you to install/run it on one computer with 1 user at a time. Win4Lin doesn't change that.

    Windows can be installed on multiple machines (in violation of the license of course) now. Win4Lin doesn't change that either. You are still asked for the product key by setup.exe when you set it up. MS has no valid arguement there. Of course, lack of validity has never stopped MS from making an arguement in the past.

  • The main disadvantage of Win4Lin compared to VMWare seems to be that it is not a real virtual machine, which makes it impossible to run anything else than Windows. Since VMWare is capable or running Linux on Linux, it can be used for kernel development and other dangerous stuff. It can also run other OS's such as Solaris or OS2.

    However, there are times when you don't want to have an entire virtual ix86 machine running under Linux just to fire up Office or IE or whatnot. While Win4Lin doesn't have all the extra features that VMWare provides, it gives you in return for that tradeoff what appears to be a faster virtual Windows system. While I like being able to install FreeBSD or any other intel-compatible OS under VMWare, the fact is that, at least for me, I don't use that feature enough to justify the high overhead. I just want to be able to quickly run the few Windows apps I use on occasion. The last time I ran VMWare, the install of Win98 took several hours. The install on Win4Lin 1.0 didn't take any longer than a "normal" one.

    $.02

    (Disclaimer: I work for NeTraverse, but these opinons are my own, etc., etc.)
  • Like everyone said.. It's not slashcode.. it's Zope/Squishdot

  • reboot? (Score:2)

    by thal ( 33211 )
    This really is Windows for Linux, it wants me to reboot after I install, because:

    You do not appear to be running a standard supported kernel.
    You will need to manually PATCH your kernel.

    After downloading a bunch of stuff, it then tells me:

    Start Installation (y/n)?y
    After installing the kernel, the system will reboot.

    Whatever happened to loadable modules? Oh well, I may install it at sometime, but I'm not up for a new kernel and a reboot today.

  • It can also run other OS's such as Solaris or OS2.

    Interestingly enough, if you look at the product specs for VMWare [vmware.com], Solaris and OS/2 are not listed as supported OSes. I browsed the VMWare newgroups a while ago, and they mentioned that they don't plan on support OS/2 for sure (I don't know what their stance is now).

  • Win4Lin has a few patches to the kernel (these are (GPL) which are just hooks to make the software work (presumably, catching interupts from Windows and whatnot). VMware does the same thing (if you install a new kernel, you have to run VMware's setup program again).

    Windows does not run in kernel mode. It won't even let you run it as root. The bane of Windows stability is the cruddy drivers. Since Win4Lin has it's own driver for the hardware being emulated, it runs much better than Windows on its own machine.

  • Re:Weird, alternate-universe Slashdot site. (Score:3)

    by Phill Hugo ( 22705 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @11:04PM (#802404) Homepage
    Its not Slashcode. Its Squishdot, a Zope product.

    It even says it at the bottom.

    www.zope.org

    Phill
  • Hmmm but you dont need to emulate their hardware... why cant anyone see that.

    Normally you have

    DirectX -> (Polygon data) -> Driver -> (Polygon data) -> Graphics Card -> (Rasterized data) -> Monitor

    All you have to do is intercept that polygon data at the level where the driver sends it to the graphics card and translate it into opengl.

    You dont need to figure out how the card works... only the interface to it.

    The other approach is to register a new DirectX device which translates the calls into OpenGL calls. DirectX is an fairly open platform in that it would be unusable if MS wouldn't say which functions were needed.
  • They would actually prefer people patch their kernel with their patches and build their own kernel. It is much easier than trying to patch every distribution's kernel. But not everyone is comfortable with kernel compilation, so for ease of installation, they try to make as many distribution's kernel available in patched form.
  • Now isn't that overkill?. I design webpages as well, and here's how I test (provided the company who ordered the website hasn't decided to do the IE only, the rest is unimportant, which is cheaper for them and more valid in commercial Europe as the Internet only *really* took off after IE 4 was in place):

    1 box with: IE 5, Netscape 2, 3, 4 series. The Netscapes each have their own directory. They don't interfere with each other. Proof? Netscape 3 renders my pages better than 4, which wouldn't happen if each version depended on the same DLL in Win-sys. Testing for 2.x compliance only occurs in rare cases. Sorry, but in the commercial arena, if they can knock off the cost of making it work on 2.x, they will. You tell them it's a bad idea, but still.

    1 box with IE 4. In Europe, 3 never amounted to much. This box is an old...I don't remember what that machine is supposed to do.

    A mac. Runs the latest version of Netscape, whichever that is. In case some secretary has one of them nice, sexy iMacs.

    Of course, having read all the posts about the uses of VMWare, I might pester the boss into getting that for ease of use. Unfortunately, it doesn't do away with the need for a mac, yet.

  • Your assessment of our patches is not really on target. I am not sure what you are talking about wben you refer to a separate "VM/schduler/etc". One problem is that the abbreviation VM can mean either Virtual Machine or Virtual Memory (subsystem). It is not really clear which are you are talking about. We do create a virtual machine environment but try to make maximal use of of the x86 chip (i.e. we try to avoid as much emulation as we can).

    We move the Linux GDT because Linux doesn't really care where it's GDT goes, but WINDOWs does! We need more extensive LDT support than provided. We also want switch-in and switch-out hooks so that we can save and restore processor state that LINUX does not save and restore for us.

    We also have a "return to user mode" hook so that we can deliver virtual interrupts (the virtual machine equivalent of a signal) whenever a return to user mode occurs. In addition, we have a task exit hook which allows us to clean up whenever the virtual machine process exits.

    We have some Virtual Memory hooks because Windows thinks it is managing memory. We provide virtual-virtual memory and to do this with good performance, we need a better interface than "mmap" alone can provide.

    We could "steal" and lock a large chunk of memory for Window's exclusive use, but we would rather play in the memory pool with everyone else. I.e. if windows is idle and not using memory, then it should be able to be paged out and used by other processes.

    There are, perhaps, ways that we could better take advantage of what Linux has to offer, but our product also runs on SCO OpenServer 5 and SCO UnixWare. We wanted to get something that is implemented in a pretty consistent way on all the operating systems. In addition, up until the merger of TreLOS and NeTraverse, we have been pretty short staffed and been trying to get the biggest bang out of our development time. So to some degree the implementation of the interface into Linux was the one we could do the fastest and still maintain excellent performance.

    Also, just to clear up a few other misunderstandings: We do NOT let windows run in ring 0! We also DO use loadable modules. However our modules require the hooks that we have placed in the kernel.

  • There are several reasons. On reason is specialty apps that haven't been and aren't likely to be ported over any time soon (practice managers etc). Another is if an individual in a business environment wants to run Linux, but must still interact with the rest of the office which has standardized on windows and uses Windows only groupware for some tasks (such as scheduleing, contact management, billing).

    It can be a great way to ease a transition as well, allowing gradual migration app by app to Linux in order to minimise disruptions to productivity.

    There are also cases in professional offices where one decision maker just wants to stay with Windows (OOOOOOH, grog say change bad!) but can't back the arguement up with valid business reasons. Their only hope is to find one app that only windows has, and try to make the business case that it is the best software for it's particular function. They will further argue that it is of overriding importance (which may or may not be true).

    The Linux advocate in that office can deflate the argument quickly by demonstrating Win4Lin and the 'all important app' running under it.

  • Wow. Thanks for wasting all that oxygen.

  • If this just involves yourself I can see your point. But if this is the case for more, say 5 and up, I would consider it a waste of money.

    That is perfectly logical and sensible. The only flaw is the implicit assumption that the process of choosing the OS to standardise on will be a logical and reasonable process in a business environment (sometimes FUD and a high prices MCSE consultant wins the day.).

  • Yeah. But I don't see them as a competitor.
    To Linux users wanting Windows compatability, perhaps it's a choice...
    but as a business, they are rather different.

    VMWare is used in a great many cases for things other than running windows on linux. I would almost say the majority of cases.
    Tech support shops, developers, etc.... due to the multiple, concurrent VMs you can run, the way they can be networked, the way the disk imaging works...

    So sorry for thinking that, perhaps, there is more to the world than linux..
  • Anybody ever tried this?? You run Linux on which you run VMWare on which you run Linux on which you run VMWare on which you run Linux on which you run VMWare on which... you got the point :o)
  • Other people pointed out some good things, but there's a category that was missed. There are thousands of software packages, mostly poorly written niche-market DBMS front-ends, that only work on Windows. The companies that write them are small, and generally don't have the resources (money or knowledge) to support multiple platforms. Many businesses, including most of the ones I've worked for, count on one or more of these packages for day-to-day operations.

    It sucks, they should switch to something better, but the costs involved in switching the software everyone uses is frighteningly high. If I'm going to recommend someone switch, I prefer recommending Free software, but $35/seat to allow the underlying OS to switch from Windows to Linux while letting everyone still run the same DBMS software systems that they've become familiar with sounds awfully attractive.

    ----

  • I don't see the point alltogether (Score:3)

    by Lion-O ( 81320 ) on Tuesday September 05, 2000 @11:21PM (#802425)
    ...why anyone would even want to use virtual machines like VMWare and others (like this one). I can understand that people like to run their specific Windows software in the environment they like best. It was no different for me a few years back when I still used OS/2 Connect and later on Warp. My normal (pm) desktop featured many native OS/2 programs while my Windows (3.11) "desktop" featured an allmost exact copy of the environment which Compaq offered you back then (Presario 480CDT iirc (486DX4/90Mhz)) and most programs could run in this environment. But the main reason for me to use this from time to time was the simple fact that some Window programs were better in handeling certain tasks then OS/2's. Handeling Word documents for example, back then a pain for OS/2 but very very easy in WinOS/2 (MS Works actually could do much more then most people realized :-)).

    But today things are completely different on Linux IMO. Where the regular tasks are concerned (hey, everyone needs to write a cv every now and then :)) you can find software for allmost anything. Word and even beyond (Excell, etc, etc) can be handled by most major suits (Staroffice (my personal favorite), WordPerfect, Applix, etc.) and in some cases it'll cost you nothing at all (not counting download times). Back then I could use Works just because Compaq shipped it with my PC. Bottom line; for allmost every task you want to do there is native Linux software available. Most of it is free and others cost you some money but thats the case in allmost every OS (one of the main reasons I had some difficulties letting go of OS/2; all those cool registered software).

    So basicly there isn't really a need for these virtual environments for just running specific Windows based software. Most of 'm could be handeled by the likes of Wine anyway (considering that you really are looking for native Linux software first before moving back to Windows based programs). In several discussions people told me that this wasn't the point to focus on; it was development. When people need to develop software they can depend on virtual environments so that they can use the OS of choice (either Windows or Linux, in most cases it goes both ways) and develop for the other.

    I think that this is one big reason & risk for another load of bl0ated software, think of it... What you are basicly doing is building software for an environment which is completely simulated by another one. When you do program / do certain specific tasks you don't have any clue what so ever what'll happen and if it will happen as it should simply due to the fact that you are completely dependend on the way the 'simulation' does its job. In the terms of your average Windows (visual) development environment this would mean depending on the way the visual dev. env. does its thing (very often producing massive (bl0ated) code) and also how well the simulation does its job. If one of them has bugs (and you can be sure that they do) your software is at risk. In rare cases you could be producing software which runs flawlessly in the simulator but is highly instable in the real environment.

    Therefor I still do not understand why anyone would even want to do its developing in such environments. I can, to a certain extend, see why people want to do this on their private projects but when business is concerned (some of these virtual machines are focused on business environments as well) I think that you are doing an extremely bad thing(tm) when you choose a want-to-be over the real product. Sure; developing Windows software in Linux may sound c00l ("wow, Linux can even do that?") but anyone with some sense would choose the right product for the right job. I know I would.

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