* Win4Lin Pro ships, ready or not
Win4Lin recently began shipping its latest tool called Win4Lin Pro, which runs an instance of a Windows applications on a Linux box.
The software maker (formerly known as Netraverse) says its product is not an emulator, or an API implementation, such as the WINE project or application-specific products such as Codeweavers’ CrossOver products. Rather, the Win4Lin software uses what the vendor calls a “Virtual Computing Environment,” which runs a full Windows operating system as a process under Linux. The company says this allows Win4Lin to run more applications – as many as will run on the Windows platform – without having to alter or port the original code, or make changes or patches to the host Linux kernel.
New in the Win4Lin Pro software is support for Windows 2000 and XP, as opposed to the previous Win4Lin Home and Win4Lin 9.x editions. However, users should be aware that Windows 2000/XP support on Win4Lin Pro is not yet fully baked.
According to the company, users are unable to cut and paste between Windows and Linux applications. Also, certain color/monitor resolution settings will make the system act flaky or just not work. And among other shortcomings, Windows support of serial ports through Win4Lin is not yet available.
Win4Lin says it is working on these issues in Win4Lin Pro 1.0, and will have updates available soon. Users interested in rolling out Linux desktops at home or in a corporate setting, but who need to have a few key Windows applications running that are not Linux supported, may want to hold out until all the kinks are worked out, since the technology behind Win4Lin Pro seems promising.
