Toms Hardware recently published an 11-page review of Win4Lin's flagship product, Win4Lin Pro Desktop. For those of you not familiar with this product, Win4Lin Pro Desktop is a software package that is designed to run Windows 2000/XP applications as intended, without the need to patch the host operating system - all on top of a Linux operating system. The technology itself is not new; it is based on technology that has been in development for the past 20 years.

The review kicks off in high gear, explaining the need for the product as such:

If you are a Windows user who interacts with Linux on a regular or occasional basis, you will eventually feel disenfranchised. The best analogy might be a left-hander in a world full of righties (and right-hand bias). In that same way, Windows dominates the desktop marketplace, and until some shift changes the status quo, this bias will continue to exist as a phenomenon known primarily to early-adopters, former Windows users, and those fluent in both platforms by way of work or play.

The review goes on to explain the need for Windows applications in a Linux world, touches on defining emulation and virtualization techniques, and even attempts to differentiate Win4Lin from VMware.

On the surface, the primary difference between Win4Lin and VMware boils down to this: Win4Lin is a specialized emulation environment designed for ease-of-use, installation, and configuration for the sole purpose of operating Windows within Linux. On the other hand, VMware is constructed with a more general goal: to emulate various OS platforms, often side-by-side, in a scalable and flexible fashion. Accordingly, Win4Lin carries less operational overhead than VMware by sacrificing scalability for simplicity.

The review continues by describing limitations, tips, and benchmarking results that anyone interested in Win4Lin should read. It then comes to an end offering its own conclusions on the product. To be fair, the majority of the conclusion centers around graphic performance or graphic capabilities - and these same conclusions can and would be drawn against most virtualization software currently on the market. One of the biggest drawbacks to virtualizing an operating system today is the lack of support or the current inability to virtualize a modern, high-performance graphics card. This translates into a common problem for virtualization environments to properly handle graphic intensive software applications.

Check out the Toms Hardware review of Win4Lin Pro Desktop, here.

Posted by David Marshall on June 25, 2006 09:37 AM