[ Thanks to Robert
McMillan for this link. ]
“… while some call it sacrilege to even consider running Win32
applications, or heaven forbid, Windows on a Linux machine, I
consider it to be our good fortune that there are a number of ways
to make this happen.”
“Dual-booting is a time-honored, traditional work-around in this
department. … The compatibility is impeccable, of course, because
you’re not emulating anything. But… once you add in the five
minutes of shutdown and startup time each time you want to switch
OS, dual-booting starts to look downright crude.”
“With Wine, you actually can run Windows applications from a
Linux terminal prompt. Instead of loading a Windows desktop, Wine
simply tries to make your Linux system look like Windows to a Win32
program, by inserting a layer to trap and respond to Windows API
calls while directing output to a standard X window.”
“The overall best way to get Windows compatibility is with
VMware, although you have to shell out $100 or more for the
honor. VMware creates a virtual PC in a window, complete with
its own BIOS and hardware emulation, that convinces any version of
Windows (including 2000 Professional and Server) and most
major Linux distributions that they are running on their very
own PC, complete with serial, parallel, and networking ports.
The operating systems themselves are rock-solid stable and most
major applications (excluding games) run without complaint.”