VMWare / Wine

[Eberhard Roloff]

Patton Echols wrote:

> My understanding is that wine can be used for running individual windows 
> apps under linux.  
yes


>vmware is used for running an entire windows (or 
> other os) environment under linux.  

yes

Currently my laptop can dual boot
> Ubuntu Edgy and XP home.  Though I have moved the majority of my digital 
> life to Ubuntu, there are still some windows apps that I need to keep.  
> I have not yet figured out either wine or vmware. 
> 
> In either case, my understanding is that I can run wine / VM  and point 
> to the Win program / partition to run.
vmware: no. You need to have a "newly installed Windows" inside your
vmware software. There are ways to convert your existing physical
windows installation to a vmware windows, but imho there is no way to
use the existing windows installation on your harddisk with vmware.

wine: yes/no Actually some years ago it was recommended to use the
existing windows installation for wine but imho this changed. Imho
nowadays wine is supposed to better work "standalone" i.e. not using an
existing windows installation.

  The difference as I see it is
> that Vmware would give access to the entire windows desktop
yes

 while wine
> would just run the program.
yes

  Again, this is probably one of those things
> that is obvious once you have worked with it even a little bit, I've 
> been reading but have not attempted to do either.  I had mostly 
> concluded from reading that the VMWare route was the better choice, but 
> since it takes more setup, 
no, it does not. The setup is extremely simply and also well explained
on the ubuntu wiki. Wine in contrast may cost you days or weeks until a
Windows Application might work. Cross-over is another thing (it is some
sort of commercial wine and well supported by the verndor), but it costs
you money, while vmware itsel does not cost you anything (as in VMware
server)


I had not gotten to it yet.  The recent
> edubuntu / ltsp thread makes me wonder whether I need to do more 
> thinking on the subject.
> 
> Does anyone have thoughts on why I should choose one route over the other?
> 
> If you only need to make "easy applications" run, you might try wine. The same applies if you are low
on the specs of your computer in regard to cpu and memory. Wile wine
generally need the memory that your computer has, vmware imho begins to
run rather well with 1Ghz CPU and 512Megabytes, 1 Gigabyte of Ram is
even better.


If you want to seriously work with windows on top of your linux, vmware
is the way to go.
Either one will require a windows License. Wine, because most apps need
it from their license agreements, vmware, because you run a "real
windows" inside your Linux, that, naturally, requires you pay the MS Tax.

regards
Eberhard