[KLUG Members] run windows within linux

[Adam Williams]

> >ok I'm fairly a newbie to linux. I've already got redhat and mandrake 
> >installed on 2 different old hdds. now I was wonder what is the most 
> >effective way to run windows apps and maybe some fairly low end games within 
> >linux? I have heard everything from vmware, to wine to just running a linux 
> >distro like xandos or something like that. most of the apps I really need to 
> >keep running sadly are things like VB. I would enjoy nothing more than to 
> >move to linux and toss MS out the window. any help would be greatly 
> >appreciated.
> VMware lets you run multiple operating systems at once.  Inside Linux,
> you run an entire Windows OS and all of it's applications.  The
> advantages are it can run almost every application.  It may have
> problems with apps, like games, that need a lot of speed.  Otherwise, 
> it runs almost everything I've tried very nicely.

VMware works very well, but is expensive and pretty resource hungry.  I
wouldn't run on on a sub-500Mhz-256Mb box at minimum.  It will run just
about anything, and performance isn't bad if you have enough resources. 
In full screen mode people won't even know they are being hosted by
Linux.

Win4Lin does much the same thing, it is also a commerical package but
less expensive (I think).  I've never tried it as when I bought VMware
it only worked with the 9x windows family which made it useless to me.

A free alternative to VMware is BOCHs.  I don't know what the current
state of that project is,  but rumor was awhile ago that they could host
NT4.

> Wine, OTOH, is free (like Linux), it uses less memory/resources, and it
> runs just the applications (no Windows OS required).

I view wine as pretty much not even worth attempting.  I hear good
things, see "this app works perfectly", etc... But every time I try it
close to nothing works as expected.  IMHO the Wine project has a been a
catastrophic failure.

> The disadvantages of Wine is not all applications run in it, and it can
> be more difficult to get working.

Is there an application that does work?  For cyring out load even
POLEDIT.EXE kills it.

> Personally I would stay away from both of them unless absolutely needed.

yep.

> I'd rather find native Linux applications to replace the Windows apps. 
> i.e.  Use OpenOffice or StarOffice instead of M$ Office.
> And of course you could always triple boot Redhat/Mandrake/Windows. 

But booting back and forth between operating systems sucks.