On Sat, 2002-05-04 at 00:34, Charles Muller wrote: > I noticed that Win4Lin is now available on the Mandrake Club download > site. For one not familiar with the product, the information on their > web site regarding how it functions is scanty. But I am guessing that it > works something like VMWare, in that you install Win4Lin, and then > install Win98 or whatever using installation disks. > > Has anyone used this product who is willing to briefly evaluate it? How > difficult was the install? How well did it function afterwards?
Here's my brief take on Win4Lin: I've used versions 2 and 3, and haven't bothered to upgrade because 3.0 does everything I need it to. As you surmise, it allows you to install Windows 9x (95, 98, 98SE for version 3, Win4Lin v4 adds WinME support) to a win/ directory within your home directory on a Linux partition. On a multiuser system, as far as I know, each user must do their own install into their home directory, so it can start taking up a lot of disk space. But on my single-user (me) laptop it works great. There are only a couple of apps that I really need for Windows, one of them being Client Access (5250 telnet client for IBM AS/400). It sort-of worked okay in version 2, but in version 3 I got all the functionality available, including Operations Navigator (GUI Sysadmin tool for AS/400). The other is MS Office, for the rare occasion that OpenOffice can't handle a complex Word document. Win4Lin requires a custom kernel, provided by Netraverse or you can apply their source code patch and compile your own. I just used their kernel compiled for Mandrake 8.1, and it works fine. It emulates all of your existing hardware for Windows, essentially providing a "hardware API" to Windows itself. The hardware shows up as "Merge x", where "x" is the function of the hardware (monitor, network adapter, etc.). "Merge" is a holdover from the original SCO Unix product which Netraverse used to create Win4Lin. Win4Lin uses 24 MB of RAM by default when it launches Windows, and in version 3 it can grab up to 64 MB if you tell it to. I think v4 can use up to 128, but I don't remember for sure. This is good because some apps require a minimum amount of RAM just to install (or else the installer will simply exit), so I run mine with 64 MB. I have 256 total, so it's not like I am hurting for memory. In my experience, even running with only 24 MB RAM, Win98SE runs faster under Win4Lin than it does natively! I think it has something to do with Linux's better filesystem performance and memory handling. On the flip side, though, I have noticed that Windows will run more slowly if I switch focus to a different app in Linux. My guess is that Win4Lin does some sort of prioritizing, so that if the Windows "window" has focus on my desktop then it is given a bigger timeslice of processing time, but if it loses focus then it is given a smaller slice. Go here to see a screenshot of Win4Lin in action on my Gnome desktop: http://sildara.dyndns.org/snapshot1.png. Well, that was more than I intended to say. Hope it answers your questions. Otherwise, feel free to ask. -- Dave Sherman Beware the wrath of dragons, MCSE, MCSA, CCNA for you are crunchy, and good with ketchup. "lynx -source http://sildara.dyndns.org/davepub.asc | gpg --import"
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
