On Thursday 13 March 2003 10:58 am, Brian wrote: > I guess I don't understand why you would choose one of these over the > other. I am familiar with VMWare, and that seems to make the most sense > if you need to run a particular Windows (or other OS) application within > Linux. I know it is a virtual machine and will let you connect back to > the primary host OS via the network and share ports. > > In the conversation about Win4Lin it sounded as if that worked in a very > similar way. I only know that Wine and Win4Lin are supposed to provide > a way to run Windows applications within Linux, but I was wondering why > you might choose one of these three particular products over another. > > I am probably going to invest in one of them (most likely VMWare) but i > would like to understand the differences before I make a decision. > > Thanks, > B
Wine is a compatibility layer that allows one to run Windows programs in Linux. Wine is free software and is not 100% compatible or functional at this point. In other words, try it, but YMMV. Win4Lin is a set of extensions that allows Windows itself to run as a Linux process. Because of the way it is architected, it can only run the 9x/ME versions of Windows. Cost is $79/user and can run in both local and terminal server It also requires a kernel patch that enables the service. Netraverse provides pre-compiled kernels for most distros though and installs them automatically. VMWare creates a virtual machine that allows you to run any guest operating system in a host OS. Can run pretty much any OS on Linux or Windows and costs about $300. VMware requires a specialized kernel module, but I do not believe that the kernel itself needs to be patched. In my mind, the most cost effective sure thing is Win4Lin, assuming one does not have to run one of the NT flavors of Windows. I believe that VMWare is really aimed at the developer market so that applications can be easily tested for compatibility on different Operating Systems. -- Greg
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