hi;

i am planning to try linux, i'll be getting a new PC,
and thinking of buying Suse 9.2. I am also not
sure now to get 64-bit pc or 32-bit for this, but
that is another thing I need to figure out.

Now, I have lots of windows apps that I need to run.

From reading around, it seems vmware is a good choice
to install on linux to allow me to run windows stuff.

Are there better solutions? I am looking for the
easiest, and best solution to do this. $$ is not the
main issue here.

I have few heavy weight windows applications that I need
to install and run, but I'd like to switch to linux as well.

thanks for any advice.
--nospam

nospam nospam wrote:

> *From*reading*around,*it*seems*vmware*is*a*good*ch oice
> to install on linux to allow me to run windows stuff.

.... i've been using it for a long time

> Are there better solutions? I am looking for the
> easiest, and best solution to do this. $$ is not the
> main issue here.

considering your NEXT statement, there are no other
"better" solutions (besides duel-booting)

> I have few heavy weight windows applications that I need
> to install and run, but I'd like to switch to linux as well.

--
<< http://michaeljtobler.homelinux.com/ >>
Quality Control, n.: The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming
off a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.

In comp.os.linux.setup, nospam nospam uttered the immortal words:

> Now, I have lots of windows apps that I need to run.
>
> From reading around, it seems vmware is a good choice
> to install on linux to allow me to run windows stuff.
>
> Are there better solutions?

Yes. Run Windows. And yes, I'm being serious. There's no point running Linux
to run Windows apps. As good as VMware is there's a performance hit
compared to running Windows apps in Windows. VMware is great if you need to
do something fairly quick in Windows.

Do what mjt says and duel-boot. Find Linux equivalents of the apps you use
in Windows and then switch.

--
Andy.

Andy Fraser wrote:

> In comp.os.linux.setup, nospam nospam uttered the immortal words:
>
>


>>Now, I have lots of windows apps that I need to run.
>>
>> From reading around, it seems vmware is a good choice
>>to install on linux to allow me to run windows stuff.
>>
>>Are there better solutions?
>
>


> Yes. Run Windows. And yes, I'm being serious. There's no point running Linux
> to run Windows apps. As good as VMware is there's a performance hit
> compared to running Windows apps in Windows. VMware is great if you need to
> do something fairly quick in Windows.
>
> Do what mjt says and duel-boot. Find Linux equivalents of the apps you use
> in Windows and then switch.
>

The problem is that I find some tools on linux are better,
but I have some applications on windows that I need to use.

For example, doing latex stuff is better on linux (Have you
ever tried to install latex2html on windows?, even under
cygwin, I just can't get it workling right).

On Linux, all these tools are easy to install and have
them working 'out of the box'. But linux does not have
Visio, nor Adobe photoshop, etc... I also have bought
applications that I need that only runs on windows. (there
are version of these that run on linux, but I only
have the windows binaries versions.) some companies
are nice, and when you buy a product you get
the windows and linux binaries on the CD,
but many others you must choose windows or linux binaries
at the time of purshase.

right now I use cygwin on windows, and it works fine for
most things, except for the latex processing stuff. I
also was hoping that linux will be faster than XP, but
that is not really the main reason I am thinking of
switching right now.

so duel boot will not work, as I need to access the data from
both windows programs and linux programs at the same time.
I can't keep rebooting everytime I want to do something,
and have to copy files from windows to linux like that,
it will not work for me like that.

--nospam

nospam nospam wrote:

> so duel boot will not work, as I need to access the data from
> both windows programs and linux programs at the same time.
> I can't keep rebooting everytime I want to do something,
> and have to copy files from windows to linux like that,
> it will not work for me like that.


.... there's another product besides VMWARE (i cant
think of the name of it now), but it ONLY runs the
win9x OSes. VMWARE will run win2k, eXPensive, etc.

there is also Crossover, but it only run a limited
number of windows apps.
http://www.codeweavers.com/site/products/

so, if duel-boot is out of the question, then
VMWARE is really your ONLY choice
--
<< http://michaeljtobler.homelinux.com/ >>
Genetics explains why you look like your father,
and if you don't, why you should.

In comp.os.linux.setup, nospam nospam uttered these immortal words:

> The problem is that I find some tools on linux are better,
> but I have some applications on windows that I need to use.
>
> For example, doing latex stuff is better on linux (Have you
> ever tried to install latex2html on windows?, even under
> cygwin, I just can't get it workling right).
>
> On Linux, all these tools are easy to install and have
> them working 'out of the box'. But linux does not have
> Visio, nor Adobe photoshop, etc... I also have bought
> applications that I need that only runs on windows. (there
> are version of these that run on linux, but I only
> have the windows binaries versions.) some companies
> are nice, and when you buy a product you get
> the windows and linux binaries on the CD,
> but many others you must choose windows or linux binaries
> at the time of purshase.
>
> right now I use cygwin on windows, and it works fine for
> most things, except for the latex processing stuff. I
> also was hoping that linux will be faster than XP, but
> that is not really the main reason I am thinking of
> switching right now.
>
> so duel boot will not work, as I need to access the data from
> both windows programs and linux programs at the same time.
> I can't keep rebooting everytime I want to do something,
> and have to copy files from windows to linux like that,
> it will not work for me like that.

Most of this should've been in your OP. It's impossible to get anywhere
close to a definitive answer without all the facts. You may have to suck it
and see with VMware (there's a trial version and the Windows version is ok
for some distro versions so you can stay with Windows). The only other way
to get the best of both worlds simultaneously is to have two machines, one
running Windows and one running Linux, and share files between them.

--
Andy.

In article <BH%vd.60010$QJ3.6573@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com >,
nospam_please@nospam.com (nospam nospam) writes:

>so duel boot will not work, as I need to access the data from
>both windows programs and linux programs at the same time.
>I can't keep rebooting everytime I want to do something,
>and have to copy files from windows to linux like that,
>it will not work for me like that.

Get a second machine. Run Linux on one and Windows on the other,
and network the two together. You can probably pick up a second-hand
box for a song, and it'd have plenty of power to run Linux.

Besides, being the paranoid sort that I am, I wouldn't trust a
dual-booted Windows machine not to peek outside its own partitions.
I'm not saying that it would engage in any "ethnic cleansing", but
after hearing about Windows 95 Registration Troj^H^H^H^HWizard,
who's to say that it wouldn't report to Bill that there are infidels
in your machine.

Stolen from someone's .sig:

> Longhorn error#4711: TCPA / NGSCB VIOLATION: Microsoft optical mouse
> detected penguin patterns on mousepad. Partition scan in progress
> to remove offending incompatible products. Reactivate your MS
> software (3 days grace period).

BTW that's "dual" boot, with an A.

--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 12:17:08 -0800, Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> In article <BH%vd.60010$QJ3.6573@newssvr21.news.prodigy.com >,
> nospam_please@nospam.com (nospam nospam) writes:
>
>>so duel boot will not work, as I need to access the data from
>>both windows programs and linux programs at the same time.
>>I can't keep rebooting everytime I want to do something,
>>and have to copy files from windows to linux like that,
>>it will not work for me like that.
>
> Get a second machine. Run Linux on one and Windows on the other,
> and network the two together. You can probably pick up a second-hand
> box for a song, and it'd have plenty of power to run Linux.

I'd second that as a good way of doing it. Run it headless even, serial
console* and serial connection to the Windows machine maybe.

Get some X software for the Windows machine (I've only ever run Xoftware
and eXceed, although presumably there are others) or presumably VNC could
do the job. Run a full Linux desktop in a window on the Windows machine.

Use Samba on the Linux machine so it can see data on the Windows box and
vice versa.

*I've never tried serial console on a PC, only on other Unix boxes that
are designed at the hardware level to do this; I can't comment on how well
it works. Certainly running a terminal session to a Linux box over serial
works fine though, I've done that much many a time.

FWIW, Paint Shop Pro seems pretty happy via the WINE Windows emulator
under Linux, but I've never tried Photoshop.

> Besides, being the paranoid sort that I am, I wouldn't trust a
> dual-booted Windows machine not to peek outside its own partitions.

Never had a problem with that myself. The only issue I've had is that
Windows tends to assume it's the only OS on the disk and stomps on the
boot record without asking at install time (and presumably when doing
any kind of disaster recovery)

(I'm not a Windows fan at all btw, despite what this post might convey :-)

cheers

Jules

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 11:14:56 -0600, mjt wrote:

> nospam nospam wrote:
>
>> *From*reading*around,*it*seems*vmware*is*a*good*ch oice
>> to install on linux to allow me to run windows stuff.
>
> ... i've been using it for a long time
>
>> Are there better solutions? I am looking for the
>> easiest, and best solution to do this. $$ is not the
>> main issue here.
>
> considering your NEXT statement, there are no other
> "better" solutions (besides duel-booting)
>
>> I have few heavy weight windows applications that I need
>> to install and run, but I'd like to switch to linux as well.

I've used VMWare since before its 1.0 release. Its come a long way and
there are many features and abilities it has that make it a good choice if
you are doing some development work or want to run something like XP Pro
and run an Office application on top. I do this all the time. I am
running it on a Dell Inspiron Pentium III that has a 1ghz processor
and 512mb of memory. I also do work now and again using VMWare sessions
with debian since I can roll back things quite easily and the images are
very portable for colleagues that work on the same project.

As far as speed goes and running heavy-duty applications, I run XP Pro,
Office Pro 2003, Project 2003 Pro, Visio 2003 pro in a VMWare session.
Those are probably the heaviest duty applications I run at this point. I
don't notice a severe hit to my productivity because I've pretty much
gotten used to doing things the way I do them. If I need vmware it does
not take as long to bring it up as it would to do a shutdown and reboot to
a dual boot setup or to walk to another computer here, bring it up or
arouse it, start the applications, etc.

Just my thots though


--
Michyael Perry | do or do not. There is no try. -Master Yoda
mperry@lnxpowered.org | http://www.lnxpowered.org

Charlie Gibbs wrote:

> BTW that's "dual" boot, with an A.


.... nope, i purposely spelled it "duel" for a reason
)
--
<< http://michaeljtobler.homelinux.com/ >>
"A raccoon tangled with a 23,000 volt line today. The results blacked
out 1400 homes and, of course, one raccoon." - Steel City News