[ale] vmware and W2K v. WXP

[Jeff Hubbs]

James P. Kinney III wrote:

> I would almost put money on the problem being the permission structure
> on XP. Unless vmware was _built_ for XP, you will probably need to give
> the user full administrator rights in order to directly access the
> hardware layer. 
> 
> Trashing XP is a juicy idea, though.
> 
> Why not put Linux on as the main OS and run Vmware to guest in the XP?
> It's a sneaky way to start a migration, but it will solve the problem.

Jim, it might not.  MS has broken some backward app compatibility.  If 
there's an app that's broken on XP but not on 2K/NT, it's still going to 
be broken in the instance of XP running inside VMware; there's no 
difference as far as the app is concerned.

On the other hand, trying to run it in Wine (or - what is it called, 
Plex86 or something?), which presents an original clone of the Win32 API 
to the app, might work, and if it does, it might be a better way to go 
than backing down to Win2K because at least if you use Wine, the API 
issies can be understood and addressed as opposed to them being totally 
opaque.

I'm concerned about the possibility that Windows app developers aren't 
able to get their apps to work adequately without somehow getting into 
some kind of deal with MS to get full access to API docs - a deal, of 
course, that would be on MS' terms.


- Jeff



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