Hi Norman, As someone who tries to get everyone I help off Windows and onto Ubuntu, I've had to come up with some unusual solutions. For most needs excluding 3D graphics I'd recommend installing Windows 2000/XP on a virtual machine. If you switch off system restore and automatic updates in Windows it should run nice and fast even with 192 or 256MB of RAM allocated to it. The nice thing about virtualising it is that you can just close Windows like an ordinary application and it will be paused in the state you left it. You can run it in a window or in full screen mode, it really is almost seamless. Until recently I have been using VMware but recently I've switched to VirtualBox and I'd strongly recommend it over the former (although you will need the freeware closed source edition to get USB device sharing.
I don't recommend Wine for most purposes because despite enormous efforts it cannot give you a real Windows environment. Using Windows itself allows you to use nearly any software and it doesn't necessarily need a monster PC to cope. My laptop is a Pentium 4 1.4GHz with 768MB RAM and I run Windows XP and Win98 alongside each other under Ubuntu quite happily. You can also utilise a virtual machine running in the background (say with the freeware VMware server) to have Windows applications running seamingly natively in Ubuntu using terminal services (remote desktop) and a couple of tricks - more info here: http://www.venturecake.com/10-minutes-to-run-every-windows-app-seamlessly-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/ . A similar feat is supposedly possible using VirtualBox alone (article here: http://www.venturecake.com/virtualbox-15-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/) but I haven't tried that yet. With a bit of ingenuity and often some fiddling, you can get even the worst software to run and usually work better than on Windows alone. Regards, Tom norman wrote: > I am contemplating buying my 9 year old granddaughter a new PC for > Christmas. Presently, she has a fairly old PC and has been using Windows > both at home and at school. (I hear cries of shame). She is of course > familiar with Ubuntu when she uses my machine and it would be my > intention to wean her onto Ubuntu on her new machine. Where I need > advice is in selecting the best way to enable her to join in with her > classmates, if and when she may need to, with regard to such things as > educational games and suchlike which do not play on Linux. > > I know of Wine and Crossover Office but neither of these appear to be > what is needed. So, fellow Ubuntu users, what would you advise an old > codger to do. > > Norman > > > -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
