Regardless of how fast, stable, and geek-chic desktop GNU/Linux has become, we still live in a Windows world. Many vendors, either through lack of vision or funding, will produce only a Windows version of their software or drivers. If you're a gadget geek like me, you likely end up in the same old quandary of "I want that gadget, but it only has Windows drivers." If you're even more like me, you'll elect not to take the high road and search for ways to run that bad boy on your desktop GNU/Linux box.
There are a handful of products that will enable Windows applications to run on GNU/Linux, all with varying degrees of success. Regardless of which products are on the market, they'll fall into two categories: those that require you to have a licensed copy of Windows, and those that don't. Win4Lin and VMware fit into the first category, which I affectionately call "virtual machine-type" applications. The second category is where products like Wine, CrossOver Office, and Cedega fall. These products don't require Windows, rather they attempt to fool Windows applications into thinking they're running on Windows by performing varying types of tricks at the binary level. I call this class of application "windows emulators" (quite wrongly, I admit).
It only seems fair to compare apples to apples and so this article is a comparison of the two virtual machine-type applications Win4Lin 2.7 and VMware Workstation 5.5.1. The test emphasizes desktop GNU/Linux and the test platform is a suitably powerful Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop with 512MB of RAM, a 30GB hard drive, a 2.2GHz processor running Kubuntu "Breezy Badger" 5.10 with kernel 2.6.12-10-386.
Overview
While it's important to note that both Win4Lin and VMware are both virtual machine-type applications capable of running Windows on a GNU/Linux box, they differ in the extent of their functionality. Win4Lin Pro is specifically designed to run a single copy of Windows whereas VMware Workstation is designed to provide many virtual machines, each of which can run a single copy of Windows, Linux, NetWare, or Solaris x86. This extended functionality is reflected in the price and download size.
Pre-Installation
Due perhaps to the fact that I've been writing a new Linux user blog for so long, I put a great deal of emphasis on the stuff that happens before I get down to the business of installing applications. How is the Web site laid out? Is the product easy to find and download? How is the documentation and support?
The Win4Lin Web site is well laid out and I found the download page for my preferred product in a few intuitive clicks. Once on the right page, I knew that I wanted the Win4Lin Pro product, and I found both Debian and RPM packages for the latest version, but no tarball. I downloaded and installed the 3.6MB Win4Lin Pro version 2.7 file named win4linpro_6.2.7-02_i386.deb, and went about reading the online documentation to figure out how to configure it.
I had to register to get a demonstration license key, but that's to be expected.
Win4Lin requires the KQEMU accelerator module for acceptable performance. Win4Lin Pro automatically builds this module as a kernel-compatible device driver every time Win4Lin is installed or upgraded. For KQEMU to be built correctly, however, the local system has to have the kernel source on it. The Win4Lin documentation contains instructions on how to install the kernel source for Fedora, Red Hat, Debian stable, Mandriva, SuSE and, thankfully, Ubuntu 5.10. The Ubuntu 5.10 instructions walked me through activating the "Universe" repositories and gave me the commands to get the packages KQEMU needed.
The VMware site was a little tricker to navigate, but still completely usable. I had to register even to download an evaluation version, but again there's nothing wrong with a company tracking its potential customers. I was surprised to see that an enterprise-ready application like VMware only offered an RPM and tar.gz package. I guess that's indicative of the inroads that companies like Red Hat are making into the enterprise space. However, running a Debian-based distro, I had to make do with the tarball. Like Win4Lin, I needed the toolchain and kernel source to build and install VMware.
I downloaded the 95MB VMware-workstation-5.5.1-19175.tar.gz file, untarred it and ran the intuitively named VMware-install.pl file in my newly created VMware-distrib directory. The VMware installation script asks a lot of questions, but also offers a lot of common sense defaults. With the exception of having to correct its selection of network interface to bridge to, the defaults worked on my system.
Company Support
As is my custom, I generally contact a company before reviewing their product to give them the opportunity to ensure that I get the right product and have access to some support while I am doing the review.
Win4Lin completely blew VMware away in this respect. As soon as I asked for a review copy, Dan Perlman of Win4Lin was at my beck and call for the duration of my testing. I got my evaluation copy of Win4Lin within 24 hours of asking for it and follow up e-mails as time went on. I rarely waited more than a few hours to get answers to my questions. VMware, on the other hand, barely gave me the time of day.
I told VMware that I would be evaluating its product for a magazine article at the same time I told Win4Lin. VMware returned my e-mail six days later and then told me that they were going to snail mail me a copy of the application. Fifteen days later, I still didn't have it, but an e-mail with a VMware license key popped up in my inbox four days ago without any preamble or explanation of what it was for. Unfortunately, the e-mail wasn't useful because the download instructions with it didn't reflect the actual layout of the VMware Web site. As I write this it's been 21 days since I asked for a review copy and support from VMware and I've gotten neither. I can't help but wonder what would happen if I was a regular user who needed support.