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When I first started writing about this, my goal was to do a review on Win4Lin and offer my findings to you. As luck would have it, Win4Lin and the latest version of the Ubuntu kernel had other ideas in mind. To say that it left a bad taste in my mouth would be an understatement, I think.
Now, this leaves us with a seriously valid question - just how worthwhile is the virtualization offered by VMware and Win4Lin? Granted, for the developer, VMWare can prove to be invaluable if you need to bounce back-and-forth quickly. However, let us not forget that we are using Linux because that is the choice we made - working on an alternative OS.
this is not about simply being able to use different operating systems, but much more about being able to run multiple processes in parallel in an environment where they absolutely can not affect each other.
virtualization is solving what a chroot can not.
as a server developer i must keep my machine running for work. restarting services would not allow me to do long term testing.
if i would want to use another operating system, i must be able to run them in a virtual instance, because i may only have time to play around while i am waiting for some other process to complete. and i need to be able to switch back any time. (for example i have been wanting to test hurd for some time, but it simply will not happen, until hurd is able to run as a virtual instance under or besides to linux.)
and even on the desktop, dual booting may be ok for the casual user, but a professional who has his or her email program open all the time, or who has multiple windows with many tabs in the webbrowser, simply can not afford to shut that off and reboot just for some word processing, or testing webpages with IE.
greetings, eMBee.
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virtualization is solving what a chroot can not.
as a server developer i must keep my machine running for work. restarting services would not allow me to do long term testing.
if i would want to use another operating system, i must be able to run them in a virtual instance, because i may only have time to play around while i am waiting for some other process to complete. and i need to be able to switch back any time. (for example i have been wanting to test hurd for some time, but it simply will not happen, until hurd is able to run as a virtual instance under or besides to linux.)
and even on the desktop, dual booting may be ok for the casual user, but a professional who has his or her email program open all the time, or who has multiple windows with many tabs in the webbrowser, simply can not afford to shut that off and reboot just for some word processing, or testing webpages with IE.
greetings, eMBee.