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Windows-On-Linux Emulator Shootout
securitas writes: "ZDNet has posted a comparative review of 5 Windows-on-Linux emulators from VMware (2), NeTraverse, WinToNet and Wine." The results encountered varied quite a bit -- none of the products are perfect, but it looks like they hit a particularly disappointing time with Wine.
If you have the funds, buy two computers and a switchbox. If you don't have the funds, configure your machine to dual boot.
Really, what's the point of running the emulation if you lose speed and capabilities?
WINE is an independently developed set of libraries and stuff that attempt to run Windows binaries on Linux and provide libraries to assist in the porting of Windows binaries to Linux. No wonder it's not as good (yet) and running a "proper" copy of windows inside what is essentially a PC emulator (or virtualiser).
They're not comparing apples with apples as usual.
Mind you, this is ZD net we're talking about...
I'm out of my tree just now but please feel free to leave a banana.
Strange to include win2net but not VNC and Metaframe which to me seem to do the same. (and do much better job at it)
And then the left the obvious out. How you can run linux programs on windows with something as sipmle as a terminal emulator or a X server
Wrong. Apache is an enterprise-level product that is priced accordingly.
VMware GSX Server is an absolute must for any company looking to maintain multiple centralized development environments.
Wrong again. Removing MS Windows from all workstations is an absolute must for any company looking to maintain a decent development environment. Note change in wording: if the environment is centralized and multiple, you only have to maitain the "center" (server), and leaf node configuration is straightforward, right ?
Pop for the $600 and get yourself a e-Machine. Put all your kid's software on there and not bother yourself with configurating (that's what a configurator does, right?) an emulator. Stop in at the Home Depot or Ikea to make a small kid-size desk and set them up there. They can work just like Daddy (only less cynical and bitter :-)!
Considering that vmware is 300$, I doubt they even care about your typical linux enthousiast who wants to play some windows games. You could ALMOST buy a good cheap game playing box for that 300$ nowadays.
.vmx and restart it.
I work doing integrations, and would almost not be able to work without VMWare. We have gigs and gigs of vm's here, already set up. You can use it almost like a quick ghost, only you can have 2, 3, 4 on 1 machine, and don't have to blow away the base machine.
Plus if one goes down, just do like someone said earlier, doubleclick the
If I need to do testing with version x of our product and version y of another product with theirs on linux and ours on winnt4 SP4, it's no problem. Just load up the vms, change the configs, and test away.
Buying copies of VMWare for game playing or to run Office is just rediculous! Talk about wrong tool for the wrong job...
Now, I also like to play Civilization II of which I own a windows copy; I don't know if it's available for Linux and in any case I've already paid for the Windows version. I could reboot into Windows and play my game, but that would mean that I wouldn't have any of my applications available, none of my files would be accessible, and none of my cron jobs would get run.
Running CivII in a VMWare box is the best of both worlds. Sure, the graphics are a little sluggish, and the sound is choppy (bug in VMWare for Linux), but it's quite playable and quite stable, and it looks like any old window on my desktop, and I can put it away for a minute and the come back to it if I need to do something else.
And of course VMware offers some cool extras, such as the ability to roll back changes to a virtual hard drive -- this is wonderful for checking out Windows software, as you are guaranteed a quick and easy (1 second, 2 clicks) return path from any installation or upgrade, no matter what it did to your registry and "system" dll's..
Using VMWare, I can keep a stable base environment and develop and test code on multiple platforms: various Linux distros, plus multiple Windows flavors in my case.
In addition to that, I can install stuff that I'm evaluating in a virtual OS - including in a virtual Linux running on top of Linux - and if it causes any problems, I haven't affected my base environment.
With VMWare, the state of a virtual machine can be suspend in seconds, and you can shut down the physical machine and come back to exactly where you left off, right down to the state of the Caps Lock key and the mouse cursor. In the middle of some complex development and want to take a break to play a game? Just suspend the VM you're working in, play your game, and resume the VM you want.
I can save multiple configurations of each OS, and keep copies of old configurations to go back to if I need to. It's like having a whole swath of preinstalled partitions, except you don't have to reboot your machine to switch between them, and you can run more than one at the same time.
The only caveat to all of the above is that it needs a lot of memory and disk space to work well - figure at least 64MB per running VM, ideally more; and at least 1-2GB per VM disk image. Good CPU performance doesn't hurt, either. The upside is that these days, this is all pretty cheap. I currently run with 512MB RAM and 2x30GB disks, on a dual CPU box, and the only performance issue I'm ever aware of is a bit of mouse lag.