best of both worlds

[Christoph]

I'd like to know who here has experience *regularly* using either windows under Linux or vice versa to get work done. First of all, I know that what I'm asking can be done using qemu, vmware, colinux, etc. However, I'd like to know if some of these have progressed to the point where I can get them working and can reliably get useful work (win32-specific software development) done under them. I've tried dual-booting, and it's just too much downtime to be useful.
Ideally, I'd use Linux as the host OS and run virtualized windows from its own partition(s), giving me the possibility of dual-booting if nothing else worked, but even windows/Colinux would be acceptable.
If I could do this, it would be a compelling reason to get a new laptop, so I'm interested in other's experiences.

 

[Suicide Al]

I personally used vmware for running office apps and my dvd copying software. have yet to have a problem. My roommate has been using vmware and windows to do programing for someone for the past two years now and seems to work wonderfully. I'd say the one downfall is that everything is a little slower under the virtual environment but it's not that bad. everynow and then you can see some lag if you've got a lot going on but otherwise it's very usable.

 

[Flamed_Chip]

I use vmware inside Linux to run a Windows XP install I use for developing in c#. Although performance is not as great as if Windows was running natively, it is perfectly acceptable. As long as you don't plan on running anything that makes extensive use of 3D, vmware should be fine.

 

[Cheator]

I use 2 machines to do it. Its more expensive, but it just makes things easier. Plus I find it fun to network . VNC and remote desktop makes it easy.

 

[=ACID RAIN=]

I use 2 machines to do it. Its more expensive, but it just makes things easier. Plus I find it fun to network . VNC and remote desktop makes it easy.

Remote desktop owns. I use Krdc to connect to my game server internally and leave it connected 24/7.

 

[David]

I went the emulating individual programs route - I run Linux almost exclusively at home and use Crossover Office so I can use Word/Excel/Etc and I believe it supports other Windows software too. Cedega works for some games. Kopete replaces AIM and MSN clients, XChat replaces MiRC/Acidmax etc.

I can get my work done in Linux no problem.

 

[Christoph]

Thanks, all. I have no love of windows, but if I'm stuck with using it, I'd rather have the whole OS at my disposal rather than a compatibility layer like Wine/Cedega/Crossover. I'll find out later today how useful those windows programming skills will be soon, but it's helpful to know that VMware runs windows well.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

yeah... VMWare is great.... kinda sluggish on a single core/cpu machine... but great.

However, unless you need to do DirectX programming or something, should there really be a need to use Windows?

 

[=ACID RAIN=]

yeah... VMWare is great.... kinda sluggish on a single core/cpu machine... but great.

However, unless you need to do DirectX programming or something, should there really be a need to use Windows?

Gaming with games that use punkbuster. That's what I host and play, and PB will not work with wine/cedega because it checks windows APIs and hardware devices and drivers. The issue here is that the PB coders will not allow it to work with wine most likely because it would be easier to hack and cheat with cross/platform support. That and they would have to go double-time on the anticheat coding since there would be a new OS in the loop.

The cedega coders call PB the "black box" because it's tough to code around, and they've already managed to get one of their test machine hardware-banned by PB

Seriously, this is the only thing that forces me to keep windows on my box as dual-boot.

 

[TollhouseFrank]

understandable.... I still have my windows partition for gaming....

 

[SickBoy]

I attended a VMware conference where I got a free license of VMware 5. I had it running on my old Gentoo install, mainly b/c I could never get my old company's VPN client to work on Linux.

If you have a fast (2 GHz+) CPU and enough RAM (1 GB+ physical) it works fine. You'll want to set the memory allocation down as low as you can possibly stand - since once the VMware process starts, it puts a lock on that entire amount of memory (meaning, whether you're actually using that much memory in the virtual session or not, the vmware process prevents your host Linux system from using it).

I did a standard XP Pro install in (one of) my virtual sessions and slimmed it down to only what was needed using regular old Windows bloat fighter tricks. Really though, all I used in the virtual session was the Nortel VPN client, Internet Explorer and Remote Desktop.

Is it worth the cash? I dunno. QEmu is supposed to work similarly but requires a lot of manual configuration on Linux. I used "Q" on my Mac, which is QEmu but somewhat more preconfigured... and even running Win98 in it is really, really slow, since it has to do CPU emulation. VMware doesn't, so it's quite a bit faster. I imagine if QEmu was set up on an X86 host, emulating a X86 machine it'd be faster as well. VMware was definitely useable though.

 

[Cheator]

Vmware is a nice option though. IT is alot of money, but even if you were to use VMware player or something, that would be beneficial. But really, nothing beats dual boot/ another system. If you are going to buy vmware, why not buy a little s754 rig maybe, let it do it for you.

 

[SickBoy]

Vmware is a nice option though. IT is alot of money, but even if you were to use VMware player or something, that would be beneficial. But really, nothing beats dual boot/ another system. If you are going to buy vmware, why not buy a little s754 rig maybe, let it do it for you.

Believe it or not, a lot of us pay our power bills and don't see a need for a second physical system just to run 2 or 3 apps, when our main system sits idle for the most part.

I, for one, during college thought that it would be cool as crap to have a cluster of small/old machines to do nothing other than distributed computing apps. Then I got out of school and started paying my power bill (and having to figure out precisely where to put all these machines, and get network hardware and wiring together for all of them) and realized that having 6 or 7 boxes was not the be-all, end-all.

I'm in a similar boat as Christoph. Need some OS'es for one reason or another but run a different one most of the time. Rather than have eight systems, I just run VMware and scale back to the amount of computing power I actually need.

 

[Cheator]

Sorry, I sitll live at home and go to school. I just didn't consider that aspect. You're right though.