What is it?

Win4Lin allows you to install Windows 95/98/ME inside Linux and run Windows & Windows apps.

Win4Lin runs on your Linux machine. You install Win4Lin, then install Win9x into the Linux filesystem. When you install Windows 9x inside Win4Lin, all your choices are already made for you. It's the fastest Windows install I've ever seen. Later you can go into Add/Remove Programs and remove FrontPage Express and other junk.

When you're done with the installation, you have 2 new directories in your Linux /home directory: win & mydata. "win" is equivalent to the Windows C drive & "mydata" is equivalent to a Windows D drive.

Why is it so great?

Cost - it's only $80.

Speed? It's fast. Because Win4Lin is installed directly into the Linux file system and because it has patches in the kernel, it runs as fast as if you had installed Windows directly on the hard drive -- which, in fact, you've done!

I use Win4Lin on a PIII 500 with 500 MB's of RAM, and most apps run really well. Photoshop is a bit slow, but quite bearable. But I'm not using it for 8 hours a day. The few times I need to work with Pshop, it's fine. YMMV.

As for Windows running better, it's true. Startup takes about 20 seconds. Rebooting takes a grand total of about 45 seconds. Overall, Windows under Win4Lin seems far more stable than just Windows. And, as I said, it seems faster than it would be if you were running Windows on the box by itself.

Best of all, it shares data files with Linux. I've got all my data files in /home/rsgranne/mydata, so now I can work on a file using a Linux program, close the file, open Win4Lin, work on the file in a Windows program, close the file, open the file using a Linux program, and so on.

In fact, you can even define other mapped drive letters in Win4Lin, which map to other areas of your Linux filesystem, or even across the network if you're using NFS or SMB.

You can also run Win4Lin in full-screen mode, in which Windows completely fills the screen, effectively hiding Linux. If you run Win4Lin in full-screen mode, NO ONE could tell that you weren't really running a Linux box.

After I install Win4Lin and get my Windows install set up exactly the way I want it, with everything installed and configured just so, I tar up my win directory. If my Windows ever gets munged ("if", I said? I mean "when".), I just nuke the win directory, untar the win.tar.gz file, and I'm back up and running in minutes.

A couple of caveats. Win4Lin only allows Windows 95, 98, or ME, but really, that's all most people need anyway. Also, any programs requiring DirectX (which means games) won't work. Not a problem for me -- I just keep a Windows machine around for Unreal Tournament, and I'm happy. There is a list of app's at http://www.win4lin.com, I believe. Win4Lin is very honest about what works and what does not. In my experience, almost every Windows program I've ever tried to use loaded and ran beautifully.

And remember, it *IS* really Windows. You are running a real version of Windows inside Linux. Any nasty thing that can happen to Windows can therefore happen to you (that means, get a free anti-virus program like Grisoft). True, I have never had to defrag Windows, though, since ext2/ext3 doesn't need to be defragged.

Competition

It's nearest competitor is VMWare. I've tried VMWare, and I don't think it meets my needs as well as Win4Lin.

VMWare costs $300, a lot more than Win4Lin.

Further, VMWare actually has you create a 1 or 2 or 3 GB (whatever you want) size file in Linux. Into that file you install your other OS(s). As a result, it's slooooooow. When you install VMWare and then install Windows, you now have another layer between Windows & the file system. For instance, using a mouse is painful in VMWare. I was unable to use Dreamweaver on a PIII 500 with 256 MB of RAM. I've tried VMWare out several times, in several different versions, and it is always slow.

Finally, WMWare locks data files in a Windows prison, so you can't share files with Linux. Because everything is installed in that huge multi-GB file, all Linux sees is a huge multi-GB file. Therefore you can't share files between the 2 OS's.

What about WINE? Win4Lin actually runs Windows; WINE reverse engineers the Windows APIs. Very few products don't run perfectly with Win4Lin; very few products run perfectly with WINE (although that is changing).

Final Thoughts

Check Win4Lin out. Win4Lin solved so many problems for me that I bought it immediately. In the months I've been using it, I've been very, very happy. See http://www.win4lin.com for more information.