On Friday 28 February 2003 04:28 am, Merlin Zener wrote: > G'day, > > I've just begun reading man:wine <insert glazed-eyes smiley> > and as far as I can see the idea is to run windoze programs > within Mandrake. Never mind the fact that I can't make it > start Excel yet [I'll continue looking for a while yet before > asking here], I thought I'd ask for the overview that perhaps > I'm missing... > I apologise if this is a really stupid question, but like several > things when confronted with a totally new OS, if you're starting > off with the wrong assumptions you'll just waste a lot of time. > > Can you run a windoze session *in* Linux? > Like: you can run a DOS session in a window in windoze, and I've > heard you can emulate a PC on a Mac. > If so, can you make the two "virtual machines" talk to each other? > For example, Mandrake can't see files on the NTFS partition > which Win2K is on, but if I had Windows running I could network > across to it from Mandrake, just like it was on my laptop? > > Come to think of it, that's the next thing I'll try - to get > Mandrake and the laptop [Win2K, again] talking to each other... > > TIA, again ;) > > -- > Merlin Zener > piano and synthesizer > Pattaya, Thailand. > --- > Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. > Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). > Version: 6.0.459 / Virus Database: 258 - Release Date: 25/02/2003
There are many emulators and wine is only one of them. In order to run most of Microsoft Office you have to emulate not only dlls (dynamically linked libraries) and Windows APIs (Application Program Interfaces) but also the DIRECT calls to the windows kernel that Microsoft put into the office package to give it the competitive edge over other word processors and spreadsheets (And incidentally opened superhighways for exploits to travel on). Win4Lin will run windows Apps using an on-board windows system that you have on your computer. VMWare will run quite a few OSes on your machine from a different OS. Crossover Office will run MSOffice Apps. None of these are free and they often have to be changed when the kernel changes. But with OpenOffice already available and free on Linux, there is no burning need to run Excel or Word. There is an NTFS read-only module (writing is still experimental cause Windows keeps the NTFS format secret and changes it with newer systems (NT 4.0 had one format, NT 5.0 (win2K) had a differnt and incompatible format, and NT 5.1 (XP) has yet another incompatible format). So it is unnecessary to run an emulator to read NTFS files, and it is unnecessary to run an emulator to read Office files with the exception of the greeting-card maker (Publisher). Civileme
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