[ale] VM ?

[Michael B. Trausch]

On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 08:00 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:

> I am not at all familiar with VMware or virtualization, or whatever you call 
> running Windows under linux. My wife wants to be able to run windows under 
> SUSE without rebooting. Basically to run Quicken & Quickbooks.
> What are a few GOOD options? Is it VMware, or Zen, or.. a good doc tutorial, 
> or installation guide would be handy:)



I have been using QEMU for some time now quite happily.  There is a
front-end, called qemu-launcher, available for it, and the accelerator
module that comes with it is now open source (free software) under the
terms of the GNU GPL.

I would be running Windows XP under it if I could get Toshiba or
Microsoft to give me a generic installer for the XP that came with my
laptop, but they won't do that and the version of XP that did come with
it is preinstalled by way of a Norton Ghost image that the DVD will only
install to the laptop itself.  I don't know if I could Ghost it back to
an image with any success, but then again, I need to try that.  Hrm.
Currently, I use a Windows 2000 installation in QEMU for the (very few)
things that I have to do with school.

Anyway, it works with Win2k and WinXP, as I have used both in the past.
It also works with just about any other PC operating system that you
install on it, including the free Unix-like systems.

Has your wife checked out GnuCash at all?  I have been using that for
managing my finances starting with this calendar year, and while I have
never used its major competitors (e.g., QuickBooks, Peachtree),
according to those I know that have, it's good stuff.  It also has a
very complete set of help files.  The only thing that it is lacking at
present is a good way to use something like MySQL or PostgreSQL to store
its data, which is unfortunate, because a web-based front end for it
would be a very good thing.  It can import data from a myriad of
formats, as well.

    -- Mike

--
Michael B. Trausch
                    fd0man at gmail.com
Phone: (404) 592-5746
                          Jabber IM:
                    fd0man at gmail.com
              fd0man at livejournal.com
Demand Freedom!  Use open and free protocols, standards, and software!
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