New Linux User

Geeky Fun: Running Windows Within GNU/Linux

by Jon on April 5th, 2006

Life is funny sometimes.

I posted a quick little video on The Linux Learning Station about how to make Windows fast and stable. It was supposed to be a joke because my primary recommendation at the end was to run Windows within Linux in order to give it stability. It was supposed to be a little tongue-in-cheek fun.

Surprisingly (to me anyhow), a LOT of people have emailed me asking how I did that.

In that particular video I was using a demo copy of VMWare that I was given to write an article. VMWare is pretty pricey, but really powerful. VMWare is designed to create multiple virtual machines that will allow any OS to be installed into them.

Another less expensive VM-type application is Win4Lin. It’s designed specifically to run a single instance of Windows on Linux.

Two other applications that can run Windows applications with varying degrees of success are the free Wine project and the commercial Wine-extension product, Cross Over Office.

Here’s a link to an entry I wrote some time ago that explains a little bit more about all of these products.

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