pmpatrick Posted March 29, 2003 Report Share Posted March 29, 2003 I beleive win4lin has recently made Mandrake 9.1 kernels available. I plan to give it a try this weekend if I have time. If anyone has installed win4lin on Md 9.1, I'd be interested in hearing how it went. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted April 1, 2003 Report Share Posted April 1, 2003 Can't say for absolute certain about Win4Lin + MDK 9.1 (I use 8.2 and will for quite a while to come) but the 9.1 kernals are definetely available. At least a few have done it, and I haven't heard of any problems at all. The Netraverse people are very good... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted April 2, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 2, 2003 I'm home today and finally got a chance to install my win4lin on Md 9.1. which went flawlessly. Forgot how much fun it is to watch win98 install on top of linux with no clue as to what is going on. What a hoot !! Haven't used it since 8.2 because I had to do a lot of kernel patching to get 9.0 working properly(intel 845E chipset, don't get me started). If anything, win4lin seems to work even better on 9.1 with virtually no difference re speed and responsiveness compared to native win98. I am very satisfied and highly recommend win4lin to anybody that has an old copy of windows and a desire to run some non-DirectX windows applications applications on top of linux without rebooting. Netraverse really delivers on their promises. Very refreshing. Although it's a little pricey, you should shop around because discounts are widely available, e.g. Mandrake Club members can get a 20% discount last time I checked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted April 3, 2003 Report Share Posted April 3, 2003 Direct X support is coming! Netraverse just signed up a bunch of beta testers for a new Direct X-enabled version of Win4Lin - that should make it a gamer's dream! Games should run faster and far more stable under Win4Lin than native Windoze! My brother thought Win XP was just the THING until he saw pcAnywhere and TaxCut running under Win4Lin. Opened his eyes a bit, and now he's starting to understand why I made the move to Linux. After the new version is released, if the word can be spread about Win4Lin like it has for VMware - which is just nowhere near as good for most purposes and really only intended mainly as a developer's platform - it should really give Linux a boost. But it really is amazing to watch Windows stupidly extolling it's "virtues" as the install rolls by. I've love to see friggin's Gates' face while he watched...now THAT would be funny... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted April 3, 2003 Author Report Share Posted April 3, 2003 Crashdamage, I've looked all over the internet since reading your post re DirectX support in win4lin being in beta testing. I sure hope it's true but I haven't been able find any confirmation. Where are you getting your info? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DOlson Posted April 3, 2003 Report Share Posted April 3, 2003 But it really is amazing to watch Windows stupidly extolling it's "virtues" as the install rolls by. I've love to see friggin's Gates' face while he watched...now THAT would be funny... I'm sure he'll be very sad that people are still forking out money for his operating system and for software that runs on his operating system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest joehill Posted April 3, 2003 Report Share Posted April 3, 2003 But it really is amazing to watch Windows stupidly extolling it's "virtues" as the install rolls by. I've love to see friggin's Gates' face while he watched...now THAT would be funny... I'm sure he'll be very sad that people are still forking out money for his operating system and for software that runs on his operating system. Right On. Native or not at all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted April 3, 2003 Report Share Posted April 3, 2003 pmpatrick: I subscribe to the Win4Lin user's mailing list, and they posted for beta testers there. DOlson & joehill: I understand what you mean about "native or not at all" but it's simply not realistic. I always see stuff like running games, MS Office or Outlook given as reasons for not makimng the Linux move, but that's bull, any number of Linux native alternatives like Open Office can handle that pretty well and if you want Linux games, then support Linux-friendly companies and buy 'em. So as far as that goes, you have a point that Win4Lin or Crossover Office are pointless and counter-productive to the Linux cause. No, it's not games or MS Office that's the problem... But there's 2 problems that actually do and will keep most businesses (including mine) from making the move to Linux on the desktop: 1. Thousands of customized business software apps that run on Winshaft. The vast majority of these will never be ported to Linux, not even if pre-loaded Linux machines suddenly popped up in every computer store and catalog tomorrow. It's just too expensive, companies will never do it. Linux will have to adapt to the software, not the software to it. We will never see Linux desktops out there in real numbers unless businesses can continue to use those specialized apps they've invested so much money in, both in development costs and training. Dual-booting is obviously not an answer here. The ONLY reasonable solution is womething like Win4Lin or Wine. There is just no alternative. 2. Internet Explorer. Possibly the lack of a totally, 100% IE-compatible native Linux browser is a bigger problem than anything else. And I mean TOTALLY compatible, including the abilty to run all IE plugins, etc. My business is a good example. We have to do much of our business on websites, and some of these require Direct X support, download & run IE-only plugins, etc. Not only are most of these websites unusable with any Linux browser, they won't even work with Winshaft versions of Opera, Mozilla, etc. They are strictly IE only, and for some it must be v5.5 Service Pack 2 or better, if you please. This means that no matter how badly I want to switch all our workstations to Linux (very badly, believe me) it's not possible until Win4Lin adds Direct X support. Crossover, etc. don't come close to running IE well enough, and dual booting is totally out of the question. After spnding a lot of time on how to make the Linux switch at my business, it's clear that for at least 5-10 years, the ONLY way I'll be able move to Linux is probably Win4Lin. It's the only thing that has a chance of doing everything we need well enough and seamlessly enough with all the specialized Winshaft stuff we have to run. VMware is much too slow, unstable, and expensive. Wine or Crossover can't come close to the functionality we need. I'm not very friggn' happy about it, especially 'cause Win4Lin does require a copy of Winsucks, but there's just no other way. Fortunately, Win4Lin is very, very good. Anyway, point is that it's not simply a matter of getting people to buy Linux and Linux apps. It's more than getting people to throw out and re-purchase all the Windoze stuff they've collected. It's also a matter of, for most businesses, being absolutely necessay to run software that will likely NEVER be available in Linux-native versions, and of the Web itself, or at rather the stupid website designers who refuse to acknowledge there is anything but IE. If we want Linux-native versions of everything, there will have to be Linux machines out there to run them, and I can't see how that can happen without something like Win4Lin to enable widespread Linux use. Then, when the sheer Linux numbers are out there, maybe we'll see Linux versions of everything, even custom business apps, and software makers will be able to brag that there's "NO Win4Lin or Crossover required!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
emh Posted April 4, 2003 Report Share Posted April 4, 2003 Just out of curiosity, are they also working on compatibility with the NT Windows family? (NT/2000/XP) The thing keeping me away from Win4Lin right now is that MIDI is not supported in it, which is quite important to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted April 4, 2003 Report Share Posted April 4, 2003 I've heard the Netraverse people say that support for NT/2000/XP is possible but means a lot of work. It's low on their priorities list, 'cause they don't see much need. Neither do I. Win 9x + Win4Lin runs as fast or faster than native Windows, is much more stable, and Win 9x supports nearly every DOS/Windows app ever written better than NTx does. The NTx advantage of NTFS doesn't apply in this case, so no advantage there. I'd bet they'll support NTx at some point, but right now there's neither the demand nor the need. No midi support yet either, but I'm sure that's much higher on the to-do list. You could post to: https://www.netraverse.com:9100/Lists/win4l...users/List.html and see what they answer or just search the list archives. The developers check in and personally post answers there every day. Win4Lin support is second to none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solanjie Posted May 19, 2003 Report Share Posted May 19, 2003 My install DIDN't go flawlessly. I've installed win4lin on Xandros which was easy-greasy. Also installed on Libra that wasn't quite as intuitive, but no problem. Then I installed it on Mandrake. To be honest, if I hadn't installed it before and knew what was supposed to happen, I would have been lost. None of the icons appeared so I had to execute from /usr/bin. This wasn't that bad for me, but a newbie to linux would have had to do some reading to find out what was happening. After win4lin installed, Supermount was dead in the water. I'm new to mandrake so I probably didn't unmount Supermount correctly trying to get my cdroms back... ended up rebooting the system. To be perfectly fair, nearly any rpm I install messes with my cdroms... just not as hard to get them back. And the biggest surprise is that I have to reconfigure X to start automatically since the new kernel dumps me to a command prompt. Thus a logoff puts me back to runlevel 5 as well. (Actually this is OK since I can't click "reboot" at the login screen and do so. I have to log back in as root under failsafe and "shutdown -r now" to do so. Halt works like a charm, tho. :/) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crashdamage Posted May 19, 2003 Report Share Posted May 19, 2003 I can't guess from your description just what your problem might be, but I've never had any trouble installing on Mandrake 8.0-8.2, and I know many people have installed Win4Lin on Mandrake 9.0-9.1 with no problems whatsoever - easy-greasy. Install problems discussed on the Win4Lin mailing list almost never even mention Mandrake - seems like RedHat and Debian have the most problems (those RedHat kernel mods can be a pain for the NeTravese guys), but they're usually easily solved. Since you have issues with installing rpms in general, you may have another problem causing the trouble with Win4Lin as well. As for supermount, it should probably be left floating face-down, we'd probably all be better off. You should have to reboot only once to install Win4Lin, in order to load the new kernel. After that, you can upgrade Win4Lin or even reinstall Windows in Win4Lin without rebooting. Post your problems on the Win4Lin mailing list and you'll get a quick response. Win4Lin support is absolutely second to none! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest solanjie Posted May 20, 2003 Report Share Posted May 20, 2003 Thanks so much. :) Will do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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