[luau] solicit

[Warren Togami]

On Sun, 2002-10-20 at 20:52, Randall Oshita wrote:
> 
> Question:
> Running VMware or Crossover would still require you to run an instance
> of MS windows right (guest OS)?

VMWare is a virtual machine that runs x86 compatible operating systems,
so yes you need an instance of MS Windows. 

CrossOver is an implementation of Windows itself based upon the WINE. 
This is NOT emulation.  The benefit here is that you don't need a
Microsoft license, and it is possible to do for free if you have lots of
patience with the WINE source code.  CrossOver is a good product because
most people don't have the time and patience to compile and configure
Wine, the Windows registry and DLL's manually.  

WINE in general only works well with applications that are official
supported.  If they aren't, then you could probably pay CodeWeavers a
few thousand bucks and they will make WINE run your proprietary Windows
application on Linux, but otherwise you probably have little chance
getting it to run reliably.

> So that being the case, the Linux box is running an app Vmware which
> uses an instance or guest OS of MS windows to run that MS dental app on
> your Linux box.
> Now if you were looking to switch to Linux to get-away from the problems
> of MS, this would not work. Right?? 
> 

You gain a small amount of reliability and robustness with VMWare
snapshots, but otherwise I see very little value in running VMWare or
Win4Lin over plain Windows.  IMHO the cost is rather high and you lose a
significant amount of performance.

I currently recommend using Linux where it does the job well,
unfortunately this area with Windows proprietary applications it doesn't
yet.