Win4Lin delivers Windows 2000 and Windows XP on Linux; Win4Lin Pro becomes flagship product for running windows applications on Linux.
Win4Lin Delivers Windows 2000, XP on Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Wow – I’m *very* curious how they did this. Last news I heard from the Netraverse people was that Win4Lin would never exist for WinXP due to huge differences in the way the two Operating Systems work. I read on their site that the only reason Win4Lin could work with Win98 was because Win98 was just a DOS program as far as the CPU was concerned. And that Win2K/XP were so different, they couldn’t use the same “trickery” with those that they did for 98. If it does work though, I’ll probably go with Win2K. Seems like it would be a better choice for the purpose of pseudo-emulation. More light weight.
I have been using Win4Lin with 98SE for about a year now and it is by far the best way to run Windows under Linux. Yes – it’s proprietary, but it works amazingly well.
This is pretty awesome! And they did it withoud requiring a modification to the kernel.
I can’t wait for a review.
Anyone have any info on the price for the 2000/XP supported version? I don’t see the product on the netraverse store website.
See at the end of the page
…”Product Pricing & Availability
Win4Lin Pro(TM) is being offered at an introductory price of $99.95 per copy until March 31, 2005. First customer ships of the product have begun, with general availability and quantity shipping to commence on February 23, 2005.
For more information and ordering information visit http://www.win4lin.com/redirects/win4linpro.html“….
This is pretty awesome! And they did it withoud requiring a modification to the kernel.
That’s more convenient, but I always assumed those kernel hooks were where Win4Lin got its performance from.
Wonder if it can run directx stuff and use nvidia hardware drivers?
heard about it at linux world
The win4lin site is really skimpy on details. Will it work with an existing windows XP partition or do I need to buy *another* windows license? Is there USB support? (The last W4L I tried didn’t want to know about USB)
Enquiring minds want to know! Well, I’ll check it out again on Feb 23 I guess
If you have a license for the machine you are on, just make a windows install disk from your existing installation. Instructions are all over the Internet.
Wasn’t there a version of VPC for Linux a while back? I’ve been runnign VPC in OS/2 for a while now. XP runs fine in it for the few things I’d need to do (that aren’t gaming). There’s also another one out now from Serenity systems – Virtual Station….but is this yet another case of another OS catching up to where OS/2’s functionality has been for years? I mean, sure there are things other OSes can do, but productivity wise is what I’m talking about. Business environments. Not asking as flame bait, but truly want to know. Why not make a type of VPC for Linux?
way to go NeTraverse!
VMWare has run on Linux for years, and does everything VPC does, only usually a bit slower.
I had put answers to half the questions here (price, availability etc) in my orginal submission to Eugenia. Oh well, editorial license.
cool. Forgot about VMWare. I’ll have to look into it. Thanks.
… comparing Win4Lin Pro and VMWare 4.5 side by in features and performance.
The current home edtion was limited to providing the guest OS with just 64 Mb of ram according to the Win4Lin web site; I wonder if the next home edition will need to allow more ram for the host OS in order for win2k or XP to run, or if support for Win2k and XP will not be available on the next version of the home edition. Could this mean a price hike?
There’s lots of windows emulations, hardware emulators, and virtualizers. I think the best thing for x86 I’ve found is QEMU, it’s like vmware, but free and open source. There’s a closed source kernel module that let’s instructions run natively rather than emulated.
I can’t see Win4Lin being capable of running windows games, which is the only thing that QEMU, Bochs, Wine, Cedega, etc. are still behind in being able to do.
I never see any scientific papers about Win4Lin. Would it be more convicenced if they publish some papers(like VMWare did), to let pepole know how they work out many issues of emulation, dont they?
I have used win4lin for years and it is a wonderful product, it is MUCH faster than using VMWARE (which is very good in its own right as well) and is much less problematic than using something like crossover. Win4Lin requires a licensed copy of windows as part of thier installation, since you really run windows as a process w/in linux. The concern I have is that NeTraverse has supposedly been working on this new NT version for years and I hope it is what they say, I would love to be able to switch back to win4lin for software development (Visual Studio .net) and use vmware for testing ( a great use).
Another nice thing about win4lin is that it is real easy to setup multiple configurations that you can run for different scenarios.
Here is to hoping. It would be great if there will be a trial version so we can be sure it will run windows 2k well, also they will need to allow the win4lin session to have a much higher memory limit than in the current version.
I have used both VMWare and Win4Lin. Win4Lin is generally faster at execution, as well as the price is considerably more attractive. Gaming is the one thing keeping LOTS of people from migrating over to Linux fully, myself included. This could very well be the ticket should it allow directx to run as it needs to access the hardware on the machine to allow for gaming. VMWare is out of the price range for a consumer at $199 for a box, $189 download. Win4Lin will not be at $99.
Any information on upgrade pricing for win4lin desktop users?
You said….
I can’t see Win4Lin being capable of running windows games, which is the only thing that QEMU, Bochs, Wine, Cedega, etc. are still behind in being able to do.
Excuse me ?
Cedega can’t play games ??????
Is your set-up borked or something ?
Cadega is made to play games !
What a good news ! This is by far the best way to use windows 98 in linux so let’s hope performances will stay as good for 2000/XP that they were 🙂
The win4lin.com site is down. I can only see it by google cache. Where i can find more info except netraverse.com?
I have used win4lin for years and it is a wonderful product, it is MUCH faster than using VMWARE (which is very good in its own right as well)
..but since this Win4lin version probably uses different virtualisation methods than the 9x version (9x != NT either) a lot of the product’s code has been changed. Its actually a different product. So we need new benchmarks. IMO, preferably between multiple products instead of merely 2. Oh well…
Does anybody out there know how this works? From the press release, it appears that it allows you to run windows applications in linux without the windows OS. It sounds similar to Codeweavers and wine. The wine approach doesn’t work so well and only for specific applications. If win4lin pro truly allows you to run ANY windows application, it is well worth $100 (less than the cost of windows) and could represent a major shift in desktop linux. However, the end of the press release makes it sound like this isn’t true:
“The shipping release of Win4Lin Pro fully supports execution of Windows 2000 applications on Linux. The company plans to aggressively issue enhancement releases to add additional features for Win4Lin Pro, including enhanced support for Windows XP.”
I can see where that last statement might be misleading. What Win4Lin does is that it runs an actual session of Windows inside Linux. This is what the article is talking about. It runs Windows 2000 inside Linux.
Regardless of the state of their software, they may have rushed the announcement out just a bit too fast…
The page at http://www.win4lin.com/redirects/win4linpro.html does not actually include any order information. The sales page does not yet include Win4Lin Pro, the listed phone number for sales is answered by a machine with a message givng the name of a different company, and an email to sales resulted in an autoresponse consisting solely of a six digit number (ticket, I presume) and “netraverse.com”.
Not a sign that they were ready for any kind of outpouring of interest!
I have Win4Lin running Windows 98 SE
I’ve been a fan since long.
I also have Vmware but I really hate that stuff – had to purchase a license in the end.
I know you cannot run two sessions of Win4Lin
so I am very curious how this is going to work out
if a Win4LinPro install conflicts somewhat with Win4Lin(Normal)
very curious here.
Anyone tried Win4LinPro with XP yet?
The website could do with a few snapshots.