[CLUE-Tech] Win4Lin vs. VMWare vs. CrossOver Office

[Gary Threlkeld]

On Tue, 2003-06-10 at 11:05, Hani Duwaik wrote:
> Hello,
*snip*
> I have no experience with Win4Lin.
>
>
> Any comments, thoughts, or feedback would be very much appreciated.


I have a copy of Win4Lin installed on a Compaq Presario 450 laptop
running RedHat 9.0.  And it works well for accessing MS Office applications.
Netraverse's Win4Lin has done a reasonable job in making Windows and
Linux rather seemless.  You logon to Linux; open a terminal window, type
win or fwin (full screen) and the process boots windows like you were on an
MS box.  Samba-like configurations insure that Windows plays well with
Linux.
All hardware accesses are handled through Linux and files are stored under
Linux directories.

As has been pointed out Win4Lin runs only under Win95/98 and the latest
version includes Win ME.  If you use Win2000 or WinXP, Win4Lin WILL
NOT WORK as I believe these versions of windows work without using the
old DOS-type calls.

The advantages to Win4Lin is that its cheap ($89 retail) and fast (acts like
a standard windows session).  The disadvantage, aside from the Win2000/XP
thing, is that it requires that you have a windows license for each user
that you
setup and you must do a complete install of Windows on the Linux box for
each
user.  Win4Lin checks to see if the user has an installed copy of windows
under
their home directory tree.  If not, the process won't run windows for you.

Hope this helps,

Gary Threlkeld

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Hani Duwaik" <hduwaik at yahoo.com>
To: "cluetech clue" <clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us>
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2003 11:05 AM
Subject: [CLUE-Tech] Win4Lin vs. VMWare vs. CrossOver Office


> Hello,
>
> I recently came across this LUG and thought I'd subscribe to some of
> your mailing lists.
>
> At the moment, I have recently installed RedHat 8.0 (soon to upgrade to
> 9.0) and am trying to use it as my primary desktop.  However, for
> various reasons, I need to use various tools in the Microsoft Office
> Suite.
>
> In any case, I was wondering if anyone has had much experience with the
> following products which seem to provide interoperability with MS apps:
>
> Win4Lin/VMWare/CrossOver Office
>
> FYI:  I recently downloaded the trial version of CrossOver Office and
> was able to successfully install several MS apps.  However, I noticed
> that when using Outlook to access an IMAP system requiring SPA
> authentication, the CrossOver app freezes.  Otherwise, I find that it
> is very useable for other apps.
>
> In regards to VMWare, I haven't used it in several years (I've toyed
> with Linux for about 5-6 years now) and the last time I used it, it was
> somewhat of a resource hog and had minimal performance (kind of
> sluggish) but I now have a much stronger system with more memory (an
> AMD 1500+ with 512MB).
>
> I have no experience with Win4Lin.
>
>
> Any comments, thoughts, or feedback would be very much appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Hani
>
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