Re: [Semi-OT]: Win4Lin
Deryk Barker wrote:
>
> All of which leads one to ask: just what does one really need VMWare
> for?
Lots of stuff. ;)
Win4Lin is more specialized than VMWare; VMWare provides a hardware
abstraction, whereas Win4Lin is very specifically a Windows emulator.
This has implications for performance as well as guest OS flexibility.
VMWare can, theoretically at least, run any OS that can boot on an x86
processor; so it's not just a place to stash that dirty little OS that
you'd rather not run anyway.
A friend of mine used to have a 2-CPU Linux machine running VMWare with
a complete virtual network, including both Windows and Linux images all
running at once, appearing to the network as separate machines. When
last I checked (a little over a year ago, I think), other OS's were
either working or close to working, including at least some of the
BSD's (Open at least, not sure about Free or Net). IIRC, Win4Lin wasn't
even running NT-based versions of Windows yet at that point, or maybe
they just hadn't yet gotten past NT4. WindowsMeHarder certainly wasn't
an option, which sucked because we couldn't buy installation media for
98 any more.
So you can audition Linux distros, play around with weird configurations
that you wouldn't trust on real hardware, and even do some
quasi-mainframe style multi-image network serving if your machine has
sufficient muscle, none of which has anything to do with Windows at all.
Whee,
-michael
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