Some screenshots of the recently leaked development version of Longhorn, Micrsoft's replacement for Windows XP [neowin]. 11:03:23 AM    comment []  

Yesterday, I wrote about the main reason that, despite my love of Linux and open-source, I still use Windows on the desktop [Mar 3]. Today, I learned about Win4Lin [Desktop Linux].

There are three approaches to running Windows in Linux; emulation, integration and virtualization, or in other words; WINE, Win4Lin and VMware, respectively. Win4Lin offers the best of all worlds in that it gives pure compatibility, broad application coverage and no loss of performance. It also accomplishes this with a minimal resource footprint.

Back when I used Linux as my primary desktop environment, I also used VMware to run Windows applications as I needed them. It worked great except for the fact that it was really too slow for any compute intensive task. I have always found WINE to be too cumbersome to work with and so I have yet to consider it a viable solution. Though I haven't had a chance to use Win4Lin, it sounds like they may have hit on the right formula for using Windows apps on Linux.

Of course, if all goes well Win4Lin will simply be a stop-gap solution. As Linux continues to mature, the need to use Windows apps continues to diminish. Eventually, we can hope that Linux will have matured to the point to where Windows apps will no longer be needed. 10:41:39 AM    comment []