Customer Reviews

Win4Lin

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I downloaded their demo version because I wanted to make sure my programs would work on it. After installing it which went very easy, I installed my Visual Studio C++ 6.0 and compiled an MFC app and a COM module which worked just fine. I have also tested Autocad 14 with it and it worked just fine and so does AOL 5.0 so I bought the program after only a few hours after trying the demo. Works very well and allows me to compile programs within my Linux environment.

Win4Lin allows me to run as many copies of Win98 as I can put in my Linux /home partition. Currently now I have 15 or so at average 100mb each. What this lets me do is install/uninstall software without the risk of destroying my Win98 installation - and without having to backup a disk, just a directory. Win4Lin installs in the user's home directory in a directory named Win. By selectively copying and renaming directories, I can keep seperate developement environments going for each of my clients, or try an installation and do a <real> uninstall. I have a Personal Web Server and MSSql server copy using Visual Interdev, that allows me to test under Linux without re-booting - just change desktops.

While the limitations for games are well documented by reviewers, Win4Lin is outstanding for business apps - they will actually run faster and safer than on Win98 natively, when no MS file systems are used, under Linux file systems.

As someone who must cope with colleagues who insist on sending Office documents as attachments, expecting me to do something with them, this tool is a painless way to make use of all my Win9n "drink coasters" - yes, it may not run the latest games, but for serious office application work, this is a God-send - everthing that it needs to do it does well - Office and Smartsuite applications, with networking, Palm synching - a fabulous product that does NOT have the VMWare limitations of requiring a pre-defined (unsharable) virtual disk or setting up SMB/Windows networking to get to the rest of your machine. VMWare has its place, but this is a great tool for those of us who just need one or two Windoze apps to get Linux onto our office machines.