[ale] VM ? (addendum: without windows licenses?)

Alex LeDonne aledonne.listmail at gmail.com
Tue Feb 27 09:15:03 EST 2007


On 2/27/07, Byron A Jeff <byron at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 26, 2007 at 10:59:37PM -0500, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> > On Mon, 2007-02-26 at 18:44 -0500, Paul Cartwright wrote:
> >
> > > hmm... my DELL didn't come with a CD, it's on that stupid rescue partition.
> >
> >
> > I hate that.
> >
> > However, by way of technical restrictions, I am not permitted to
> > actually use my license of Windows in any way that I want.  In essence,
> > Toshiba and Microsoft are telling me that I am not allowed to run this
> > copy of Windows in an emulated environment, implying that I have to buy
> > a new Windows XP license to do that.
>
> It's for this reason that I'm only interested in envinronments that doesn't
> require a copy of Windows to run.
>
> Does anyone have an accurate representation on the usefulness of Wine and/or
> Crossover? In the past I just haven't had enough patience to fiddle with
> either of them in order to see if they actually work with any degree of
> reasonableness. I generally spend my focus working with native Linux apps,
> which I feel is worth the time to fiddle.
>
> But the reality is that we live in a world where most folks believe that
> Windows is inexorably bound to their computers. So as with the OP who is
> fine working with Linux, the SO is not. She needs that one or two Windows
> applications that she cannot live without.
>
> I'm working with a couple of non profits who are in somewhat of the same
> situation. There's a couple of custom applications built in VB that one
> would like to run remotely from a central applications server. Costing out
> terminal server and CALs is a real headache. A Linux applications server
> for windows applications without Windows licenses would be a real benefit.
>
> In short, I'd like to get the ability to run the occasional Windows app without
> having to have a Windows license.
>
> Anyone doing this?
>
> BAJ

One data point, because the OP mentioned Quicken and Quickbooks:
I tried to run Quicken 2002 under Wine (whatever version was current
with Mandriva 6 months ago). There's something nonstandard in the way
Quicken handled its Multiple Document Interface, and I would end up
with an infinite windowfy-maximize loop on an account window within
the MDI. In fact, until I tried to run it under Wine, I hadn't
realized that under the hood it was, in fact, a goobered up MDI for
the UI. At least now I know I can use Ctrl-Tab to go back to the last
thing I was viewing. :)

So, anyway, use caution with Intuit software under Wine, and good luck!

-Alex



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