On Mar 6, 7:59 pm, Roy Schestowitz <newsgro...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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> So you want to run windows programs on Linux?
I think running both concurrently i probably FAR more common than
running Linux exclusively. The CEO of Linspire suggested that only
about 5-7% of all Linux users run Linux exclusively, with no
capability to run or access Windows in some form.
Fortunately, with Dual-Core and Quad-Core CPUs, 7200 RPM SATA-II
drives, 64 bit processors, and 4-8 gigabytes of RAM, there is no
reason why you shouldn't run both.
Many corporate office users are using both and don't even know it.
The machine boots Linux and then boots a Windows VM. They might not
even know that their Windows is actually a Virtual.
If you are trying to use Windows as the "Host" operating system, you
will have horrible performance problems. Some things that will help
include turning off indexing for the entire C: drive (right-click the
drive, click properties, uncheck the "index..." and do thin for the
entire drive, including all subdirectories.
Run as few services as possbile. The virus checker, zip compression
accelerator, and even the OpenOffice accelerator all take up huge
amounts of memory, by preloading lots of libraries to geep them in
memory as much as possible. It's a good idea when these programs are
your primary use of the computer. Not such a good idea when you want
to run a guest OS or two under the covers.
Turn off paging, or reduce it as much as possible. If you need to
swap, you need to make the VMs smaller. Don't try to run 2 gigs of
applications and then try to load up a 2 gig VM. Everything will run
much slower, to the point of being painful.
Run a WindowsVM and a Linux VM. This makes it easier to control the
amount of RAM the "working" version of Windows gan take for itself.
When you run several Windows applications, they try to grab as much
memory as they can for themselves. You end up thrashing memory.
Turn of the "pretty" feathures - all those fancy options take memory
and memory bandwidth, which can cause even the simplest display
changes to slow things down substantially.
Run FireFox and E-mail programs in the VM - these programs tend to
grab lots of memory and it's very hard to get it back. Running FF and
IE at the same time on the "Host" OS is sure to slow your machine to a
crawl each time you try to switch to/from the VM(s)
Use expanding virtual disks and don't use the "chunks". The "chunks"
are easier to back up, to DVDs, but if you need more than 3 DVDs, you
probably wont want to back it up to DVD anyway. These days external
USB drives are a very cheap and quick form of back-up.
Defragment your drives and your virtual drives frequently.
Fragmentation is a big problem, especially with "chunks" and keeping
things organized well will help things run faster and smoother.
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | My point of view in this matter is quite simple. If you wish to run windows
> | programs then use windows. If you wish to run Linux and windows programs then
> | either use an emulator, wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) or a virtual machine.
> | If none of those solutions are suitable then stop thinking about using Linux.
> | Stop complaining that you will use Linux if only it could run this program.
> | Either use the operating system the program was designed for or use an
> | alternative program designed for the operating system you wish to use.
This is probably good advice. Wine will run several programs well and
save you the hassle of switching to and/or starting a virtual machine
for a simple Windows program, but there are so many that WON'T run,
that you will probably still need a Windows VM. So don't buy the
machine with "No OS" unless you're sure that you can do without
Windows entirely. Get the OEM license for Windows, and installation
media. That way you can re-install Windows if it goes south. You
should always insist on getting installation media anyway. Those
"recovery partitions" are useless if you need to replace a hard drive,
or the recovery partition gets clobbered.
> | [...]
> | Just because windows programs do not work on Linux does not mean that it is
> | not ready for the desktop. Under normal usage Linux has no problems and is
> | much better than windows in many ways. Wanting to run a different operating
> | systems programs under Linux can in no way shape or form be considered normal
> | usage.
> `----
Linux is perfect for those folks who want to stay with Windows 2000 or
XP and don't want to have to worry about whether the hardware is
supported by Windows 2000 or not. If the machine has a Vista license,
and is "Linux Ready" you can use Linux as the host and use the VM to
hide all those nasty hardware dependencies. At the same time, you can
get the benefits of that 300 Mb/second 802.11n WiFi card on Windows
2000. Just make sure that the WiFi device is supported by Linux.
Linux makes a very congenial host for VMs as well. It doesn't try to
index the hard drives, it doesn't need to scan it's entire hard drive
for viruses and malware. It also uses memory very efficiently, using
what isn't needed to buffer the hard drive, allowing more efficient
disk access. When more memory is needed, it can be allocated and
freed based on the block sizes being requested. Linux also has faster
context switching so the machine might even seem faster than native
when running as a Linux guest.
For years, Linux has "played nice" with Windows, and now it's starting
to pay off.
> http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/locutus/so-you-want-to-run-windows-progra...
> http://www.winehq.org/announce/1.1.16
Still a very long list of problems and issues.
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