“I have a confession to make. I run Windows on my laptop. That
is, I run Linux, and then use Windows under VMware. This month I
want to explore the various alternatives for running Windows
applications under Linux. While I had long been aware of Wine and
VMware, I had only recently heard about another approach: Win4Lin.
With that in mind, I fired up Google (another Linux success story),
ran a search on Windows emulators, and found one additional lead,
Bochs. So this month, we will look at those four alternatives for
running Windows applications under Linux.”
“I run Windows because many of my customers use it along with
Linux, and I need to test the same Windows-based applications that
they run. However, the main reason surfaced when I got my new
laptop about a year ago. I felt adamantly that I would run Linux on
it because I had lots of work to do on Ethereal and was writing a
book on Samba (see Resources for a link). Unfortunately, I had
several years of mail locked up in Eudora that I needed to access.
I also needed to run Word, PowerPoint, and Excel on many occasions,
and the dual-boot blues did not appeal to me any longer. So, I got
VMware and loaded Windows under it, and I’ve been much more
productive ever since.”
“While Linux makes great strides in the server space, many
desktop applications still only run on Windows at the moment. Thus,
many people out there can’t run Linux exclusively but need a second
system to provide access to the few Windows applications they
use.“
“That fact highlights the need for Linux, though an excellent OS
for many businesses, to coexist with Windows for the time being. Of
course, we all expect Linux to prevail in the long run but, at the
moment, it is often overlooked by people who are not aware that
software exists to run Windows applications under Linux.”