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Make it really simple on yourself: develop the app for *nix, then use VMWare to run a *nix and your app on the NT boxes.

So, what Wine has to do is to be vmware , isn't it ?
They even probably have a marketing department.

Linux can natively be configured to enforce disk quotas and (with more difficulty) manage network bandwidth without any special virtual server software. Also the native unix process scheduling algorithm does reduce the priority of CPU bound tasks. The getrlimit(2) system call can be used to set various limits per process (not per virtual server unless the virtual server runs as one process I guess.) I know of no way to specifically limit disk bandwidth on Linux.

Freeware such as s_context and user mode linux provide no control over how much resources one virtual server gets over another besides disk usage. Other limited resources like CPU, disk and network bandwidth (RAM?) are shared just like they would be shared by separate processes under a single Linux system.

FreeVSD is not a virtual server, but a collection of scripts, binaries and multiple copies of hard-linked read-only filesystems for the common system environment. It is has the best chance for winning the total performance award but has no extra features for resource limits between systems.

True virtual machines. (E.g., vmware) provide very good isolation, but this leads to little sharing of excess unused resources between virtual servers I believe. They also have poorer performance in general because so much emulation is done.

The commercial, proprietary Private Server product from Ensim seems good from the marketing blurbs which say that they have "their own guaranteed share of the servers resources, including CPU, memory and bandwidth". I wonder what the performance penalty for this is and how much does it cost? Can anyone comment?

How were you able to use VMWare on a Mac? I don't see anything for Mac on their web site. Are you sure it was vmware?

Or were you using VMWare running inside of Virtual PC running Linux? :)

How about vmware? It works now!

run a real OS, then boot other OS's in virtual machines using VMWare (VMWARE is available for winNT as well, I just like Linux :-) )
I've done it on my Pentium II 266 to run Win95, and it seemed to run at native speeds. If you have a Big Bad 1GHz+ machine with tons of ram, VMWare will work GREAT. You can re-partition for other OS's but you don't have to, you also have the option of storing that partition as a single file in your regular partition.

The WinME side of my laptop has slowly been declining with every patch I install, be it from Microsoft or Acer. Having fscked the sound I decided to try and roll the config back a week, which promptly deleted the boot files for WinME. So I'm now booting into Linux primarily at last, using OpenOffice build 638, which seems to read Office2K files happily, and running NT4 in VMware 3.0 beta to use Ameol until I find time to start my Cix OLR project. I will not be going anywhere near XP and I'd like to thank Microsoft for improving my computing experience immensely.

The extremely high-resolution threading of the operating system made even the simplest programming tasks near impossible, as mutex locks and thread conditionals needed to be spread throughout the code to ensure proper execution.

Right on! I ran BeOs under VmWare to try developing for it, and the pthreads compatibility was... well let's just be polite and say "extremely non-optimal". The spin locks in the kernel were so tightly placed that any possible race condition you could think of would occur if you didn't mutex lock the hell out of it, and the littany of devices you had to lock to access memory was just unbelievable. I pretty much had to read through the video driver code to get anything done as the documentation got as far as "Hello World" before wishing you luck.

Anyway, DeMuDi looks to be a step in the right direction - maybe if a Linux distro starts shipping with 2 kernels, a standard kernel and a multi-media enhanced kernel, we'll finally have a workable solution.

Complaining on and on about how Company X won't provide Software X for Linux, followed (immediately upon release by Company X of Linux version) of complete deriding of that software (comparing its features to some previously created Linux software) is not good encouragement for other software companies looking into the possibility.

The only encouragement for commercial software companies looking into the possibility is the potential to make money from the sale of their software product. That's going to be any software company's burden to overcome if they're going to play in the Linux arena.

Linux users are naturally going to compare the proprietary software offering with open source alternatives. Some are naturally going to resist using the closed source product because they know what they'll have to give up if they do, namely some freedom.

Some software overcomes this burden and succeeds. I dare say VMware is presently in this position, providing the best hardware virtualization software available today. Perhaps Plex86 may one day shift the balance of power, in the Linux workstation market.

Most commercial software companies who introduce proprietary software in the Linux marketplace will naturally find a lukewarm response unless the value potential of their offering overcomes the existing culture.

I got some screenshots up at my site.

Also, The official AOL client works
under WINE (You'll probably have the best luck using the 16-bit version of the AOL client).

I converted all my stuff from Win2K/Office to Mandrake 8.0. It took about two months for the total conversion (let me tell you email from damnable Outlook was a pain) but now I'm 100% MS free. Only legacy thing which is a pain is Access. I might add that I purchased VMWare to keep my stuff avail should I need it during the transition.

I'm no longer concerned with licensing, software EULAs, piracy, inability to play particular music formats, or big brother bill. I don't care about service packs breaking my whole machine, web bugs, or spending ridiculous amounts of $$ to keep up with their silly software releases and $$ for software that should be included with the OS.

My current machine will probably last me four years - much longer than if I stayed with the M$/Intel upgrade cycle.

I now purchase software because I feel the development for it is worthwhile (i.e. vmware and mandrake), not because I'm in danger of violating commercial law.

The only way to really stop M$ is to break their pattern of generating revenue. As a collective of consumers, we have this ability. It might take time, but history shows that all monopolies eventually fail. Should our government actually figure out a way to outlaw open source software, then perhaps it is time for me to change my place of residence. Until then, I urge you all to figure out a time and cohesive manner with which you can start refusing to give M$ the $$ they demand.

&J

like the parent thread, this comment is also off topic, Mod away!

&gt 30s from POWER ON to completely logged in.

30 seconds to boot Windows, but how long to boot linux on the same hardware? Is there a significant difference? Don't get me wrong, I don't want to start a flamewar. I think it's great for consumers that boot times are coming down because most "non-techies" don't leave their computers on 24/7, and it makes the computing experience much more enjoyable when you don't have to wait long.

It would be really cool if Microsoft could come up with some sort of Flash-ROM boot loader to speed up boot times. I recently found This website featuring a linux system that boots in 3 seconds! Thats faster than my monitor!

Currently my main O.S. is Win2k, which I've been very happy with overall. I've had very few problems, and most of my system crashes are caused by power outages ;-)

On the other hand though, I've had poor support for some of my hardware. Like my ATI all-in-wonder TV tuner card. It works fine in Win9x, but the latest "beta" drivers released at ATI's website crash my computer everytime I load the Television software. I gave up.
Likewise, my old ISA FM-radio tuner card has the same problem. No support in Win2k. Frankly I'm a little worried about upgrading to XP for fear of losing further compatibility. It's a shame I can't somehow preview XP on my current hardware before I decide to purchase.

That is probably the biggest reason why I'm considering a switch to Linux. I already own a copy of VMWare so I'm hoping if I make the switch permanent, it will be less painful.

The other thing I think makes Unix cool enough to consider switching is shell scripting. I'm just a mechanical engineer, but I dig the ability to program simple scripts to automate tasks.

Something I've been dying to do is create a script to record my favorite morning radio show in the morning, convert the file to a compatible audio format, and then burn to audio CD, all before I even wake up! That's just one little project I've been wanting to take on, but I'm sure it would be much easier to do in Unix than windows.

Another task I plan on doing often is execute elaborite Finite element models using Matlab. To do this, it would be cool to be able to remotely log into a faster computer to execute code. That "PCAnywhere" feature of XP that you mentioned gives me the impression that I may be able to do that with XP.

XP does sound like it's come a long way from Win2k, but it will still be tough to decide to stick with Win2k, switch to XP, or switch to Linux.

Here in my office I do 80% of my work under Linux (development, LaTeX, email, etc.) and whenever I need to access Word, Excel, etc. I simply fire up VMWare, boot it into Win2K and voila. Works like a charm.

VMWare isn't cheap (at US$299.00 it's at the high end of personal affordability), but well worth it.

Until there's a better solution for office suites under Linux, many of us will need to live with MS Office as a must have.

Kevin

> ...but what about going to some more powerfuly software
> such as video editing, digital video production or audio editing
> and production - which is what i'm into myself.

If you've got high-end hardware and high-end video editing needs, and no Linux native applications fit the need, you might want to give Wine or VMWare a look. They are both very good at running Windows apps under Linux, and Wine at least is free.

Virg

I don't see a problem here.

This is what happens with every new Linux kernel and VMware, for instance.

I use VMWare for this. The best part is that I can set it up to undo all the changes to the disk image. That way I can boot up, install our software, test it, then roll back to a clean image.

Or you can browse pr0n sites and not leave a browser cache/history trail.

Supposing someone installs XP in a virtual VMWare, or Plex86 machine, and then cloned it several times.... Hmmm...

I think I'll just install IE6 on a Win95 VMWare machine in since I only need it for testing web pages :-)

You could always buy a copy of VMware, and use it to run Windows 98 or so under Linux, for running MS Internet Exploiter. That's what I do when I need anything Nyetscape/Mozilla can't do.

Sad to say, that's probably your best bet for getting a decent browser under Linux.

I completely agree. Our company uses build numbers, so customers get build 1300 or build 1422 and not "version 1.0". This is great for us developers, but the salespeople hate it! They want the ability to say [fanfar]new! version 2.0 is out![/fanfare]

With commercial products this is a sad fact of life. I think we're moving to doing it the way that VM Ware does it, with a version+build ie: "1.1 (build 1321)" Guess we'll see how that works :)

On my server, I have a VMware GSX license, and I keep a clean virtual-disk with RedHat 7.1 + XFS (my dist of choice) on line at all times. When I need to test something-- anything, an app, a new kernel, whatever-- I clone off the test virtual-disk, boot the VM, and go.

The eval download page for VMware GSX is here.

VMware has cool stuff like non-permanent disks so you can install it, see what happened, and then roll your disk back to where it was before the install. Just what you need.

Gerv

It almost completely bridges the gap between Linux and Windows (currently doesn't support 3D games very well).
---------------------------------

It almost completely bridges the gap between Linux and Windows (currently doesn't support 3D games very well).
---------------------------------

It almost completely bridges the gap between Linux and Windows (currently doesn't support 3D games very well).
---------------------------------

He can read just fine.

You said IE on Windows is the best option.

He said that was good to know, in case he chooses to run Windows under Linux.

What's so weird about that?

Yes, in it's own sort of way, it is "cool". We all know that emulation has it's "problems" (which, in this case, aren't really problems IMHO -- they're insulation between the host and guest OS's. I mean, if you're running Win98 inside of VMware, you don't want W98 to crash and take down Linux with it, do you?)

VMware has limited support for DirectX. Meaning that your games, if they run, won't run well. (See here and here.)

It also won't handle OpenGL, SDL, etc. because all of those require direct access to the video card (unless you're running them in software. But anyone who has tried playing a game that uses OpenGL with software rendering knows that it's not worth it).

Sure, VMware is worth it. But if you simply want it for gaming (and you *have* to do it under Win32...), save the $100 you'd spend on it and go get yourself another machine.

Yes, in it's own sort of way, it is "cool". We all know that emulation has it's "problems" (which, in this case, aren't really problems IMHO -- they're insulation between the host and guest OS's. I mean, if you're running Win98 inside of VMware, you don't want W98 to crash and take down Linux with it, do you?)

VMware has limited support for DirectX. Meaning that your games, if they run, won't run well. (See here and here.)

It also won't handle OpenGL, SDL, etc. because all of those require direct access to the video card (unless you're running them in software. But anyone who has tried playing a game that uses OpenGL with software rendering knows that it's not worth it).

Sure, VMware is worth it. But if you simply want it for gaming (and you *have* to do it under Win32...), save the $100 you'd spend on it and go get yourself another machine.

. . . with predictable results. Anyone remember Things and Thingmaker? I didn't think so. That's because people don't tend to "consume" much "content" that requires some "rights management-enabled" plug in that usurps fair use (not to mention being hard to install and use).

Also, even if this software is Windows only, a screen capture would work just fine under VMWare or similar program.

VMWare

-JPJ

Well in that case, Linux isn't an OS either. And neither is NT.

isn't there a better way to go thatn WINE?

VMWare express, US$79.00. You can only run Win9x, and it can't be from an existing partition.

As for the Windows license, he already has one, since he is already dual-booting to use the windows tools he needs to.

You only need the full workstation product if you need one of the additional features like WinNT/2k support, or booting from raw disks.

The reason why the NSA did this is for many reasons.

1. Improve the general state of the U.S. computer systems. Which in turn makes the NSA's job easier as they are out to protect the U.S. You might not approve of some of their methods but they are doing this to keep the U.S. a free and soverign nation. (At least the ordinary folks working there are.)
2. Encourage development of an Open Source/Free/Outside Developed/Third Party O.S. that has Orange Book (? I think that's the right one) C2 security. Everything in anything governemnt that has any type of security has to be SO secured its disgusting. By doing this they can ideally not spend so much money developing these internal O.S.es and either not HAVE to have such a big budget or do bigger and better things with their money. Read the press release on VMware's site about the cooperation with NSA to do development on Linux. Put these two things together. If I was sun, ibm, whoever does C2 hardened OSes I'd be scared right about now. The NSA wants to use linux internally, not Windows or Solaris or AIX.

So all in all this can be seen as a good thing. If the NSA is really trying to make it so their are backdoors in every Linux installation they have a LOT of eyes to get through to slip it past.

get a machine running NT

install VMware

install Linux on the virtual machine

install the Linux version of VMware on the virtual Linux machine

install NT

This probably begs the "people with too much time on their hands" response.

If you really must use Microsoft Access (or any other non-DirectX product), you could always do so using VMWare Express. While it's slow, it still gives me the "advantages" of Windows (using Access for example), without the disadvantages (rebooting after MS Access crashes).

On my AMD K6-II 500MHz box, the VMware machine runs at speed that I'd expect from a 200MHz Pentium class. Everything else apart from Windows-only stuff, I run native under Linux (licq, Netscape, and friends).

VMWare does not support DirectX, so you can't run most Microsoft Windows games - or any other product that uses DirectX such as Wizards of The Coast's "Dungeons and Dragons Character Generator".

While everyone continues to use software that is in it's 19th beta stage, buggy and unfinished, I can use a very stable commercial product (say, IE for example) that performs well

Not if your computer doesn't have an x86 processor. In that case, you'd need an emulator plus a copy of Windows (USD $320). Even if you are running on an x86, you need a virtualizer ($300) plus Windows. Isn't $600 a bit steep for a web browser? Might as well just pay for Opera.

What's that rule in software development? Something like, adding more members to a project team makes the project later. Or to put it another way, too many cooks in the kitchen...

Spoil the broth. See also The Mythical Man-Month.

But...

If you're not running Linux, you should be able to build Wine on your platform. As far as I know, Wine will properly do international fonts & formatting if the copy of Windows installed on the box is configured properly.

We use VMware all over the place here at my workplace, where we have a large number of Unix geeks who need to be able to use Word and Excel and such (and where Star Office sometimes doesn't get the job done, unfortunately). Inside VMware, you're running a real, honest-to-goodness Windows box. You can even have it setup to do networking (I setup my linux workstation to do IP Masquerading for it). It's a heckuva lot more painless than dual booting, and you still get to run your favorite OS.

You could also try Wine perhaps, which I hear supports running Office 2000 applications now.

I saw at the VMware booth at linux world expo yesterday a demonstration of a product called VMware GSX, which is not out yet, but is going to be their "enterprise level" product. Rather than running a virtual OS on top of a real OS, it runs multiple VM's straight on the hardware level.

If the NSA thing is using this it would cut out a whole layer of security that they have to deal with.

Pretty soon, Linux may be sufficient to run games. That would be very nice, and would stop me ever having to boot back to Windows. It is the only thing stopping me from doing so right now. I own a licensed copy of VM Ware but it just doesn't do Direct3D.

If you already have Windows and language software, then using a virtual windows in VMWare makes the most sense.

I'm working in the wireless webpad field. All I can say is that if the wince models hit the market first, it will damage the whole product category. Wince is usable only by geeks, who would shun it because it of the problems, wince is not the right tool.

Be might be better. Linux/Mozilla or QNX/Opera might also be acceptable. Give it a chance. Note that it sure would be nice if Be ran under VMWare. This would make checking Be out a lot easier.

Essentially, it creates a virtual machine. It was 'designed' to let you run Linux under Windows and vice versa. (They have two different versions - one to run on Windows, and one to run on Linux.) However, you are not tied to running the opposite - I am considering getting the version for Linux (since that's what I use) and putting multiple Linux distros on it.

So, essentially, you can buy VMware (they seem to have a new server edition; don't quite understand the added features), and run Slackware, Debian, or whatever under the RedHat they force you to use... Or, you could opt for Windoze (if you think viewers will like the blue "color scheme" that occurs frequently...), or even another *nix. I think BeOS is possible, too...

Again, I've never actually used it much, so I don't know if it's the type of thing I want powering my webserver.

...............
SUWAIN: Slashdot User Without An Interesting Name

Or VMWare.

Another alternative would be for plex86 or vmware to become part of the kernel. Then you could have a kind of 'switch personality command like on the old Sequent systems (you could choose bsd universe or system V). In this case you could say something like 'redhat ls -l' and the process would get forked in a redhat environment.

Given that you're posting around here, I'm guessing you have a Linux box handy. Here are some of my favorite sysadmin tools:

• dig - This is a more advanced tool for seeing what's going on with DNS.
• nmap - A great tool for probing your server to make sure you haven't left anything open.
• Apache Bench (ab) - This simple but effective benchmarking tool comes with the Apache server. It's great to see how your site will perform under load.
• wget - a tool for remotely getting web pages; it's very versatile -- you can even use to save a copy of your whole site, just in case.
• Ethereal - Having trouble figuring out what's going on between the browser and your server? This will capture all the packets and decode them into a nice conversation for you.
• vmstat - want to know why your server is slow? Get used to watching the vmstat numbers while it's fast, so you can see what's different when it's slow. It's raw numbers that are hard to interpret, but it's worth getting to know. Maybe this should be another Ask Slashdot question?
• Netsaint - this is my favorite automatic monitoring package. Once your site is in production, you can set this up to patrol things and make sure everything is working. That lets you get on with other stuff, knowing you'll hear about trouble pronto.
• MRTG - A tool that makes excellent long-term graphs of bandwidth use.
• IPtraf - Where MRTG gives you the broad overview, this gives you the second-by-second nitty gritty.
• perl - Last but most is Perl, a Swiss Army chainsaw of languages. If you'll be doing any web stuff, pick up a copy of Learning Perl and spend a little time with it. Once you learn the magic of regular expressions, you will never again say "that's impossible!" to a problem.

As far as non-sysadmin stuff goes, here are some of my other favorites:

• Bugzilla - this is a free and flexible bug tracking system. Highly recommended, especially for those people who don't think they need a bug tracking system. Our designers thought it was silly to start, but even they use it all the time now.
• CVS - Like bug tracking, most web sites don't think they need version control. Most web sites are wrong! CVSweb is also recommended.
• HTML Tidy - bad HTML in, good HTML out.
• WebTV Simulator - Sure, you and I don't use WebTVs, but a lot of people do. Browse your site with this to see how the other half surfs.
• VMWare - Along similar lines, VMWare is a Windows box emulator. I use it to keep a bunch of synthetic windows machines with a variety of OS versions and browser versions. It makes QA much easier.

And if there are particular tasks that have you stumped, come back and ask again. 'Round these parts, we have big toolboxes.

Vmware seems to be adapting their business model. They are developing server products that are now in beta. They have 2 versions. One runs under Linux and the other runs directly on the hardware and both run the usual guest OS's. I believe there is plenty of room for both Plex86 and Vmware. Maybe Citrix should worry about losing some market to Vmware's server products (probably not).

As far as I can recall, wine can be configured to access parallel and serial ports. Other emulators, like VMWare can do the same. And, might I add, for running programs that don't use ActiveX type stuff, VMWare is a lot better than wine, but you need a copy of Windows installed on the computer.