Win4Lin is a discontinued

proprietary software Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and int ...

application for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

which allowed users to run a copy of

Windows 9x Windows 9x is a generic term referring to a series of Microsoft Windows computer operating systems produced from 1995 to 2000, which were based on the Windows 95 kernel and its underlying foundation of MS-DOS, both of which were updated in subs ...

Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), releas ...

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct upgrade to its predecessors, Windows 2000 for high-end and ...

applications on their

desktop. Win4Lin was based on

Merge Merge, merging, or merger may refer to: Concepts * Merge (traffic), the reduction of the number of lanes on a road * Merge (linguistics), a basic syntactic operation in generative syntax in the Minimalist Program * Merger (politics), the comb ...

software, a product which changed owners several times until it was bought by Win4Lin Inc. Citing changes in the desktop virtualization industry, the software's publisher, Virtual Bridges, has discontinued Win4Lin Pro.

Products and technology

In 2006, Win4Lin came in three different versions, depending on the virtualization requirements of the user. * Win4Lin 9x allowed the user to run a full copy of

Windows 98 Windows 98 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. The second operating system in the 9x line, it is the successor to Windows 95, and was released to ...

Windows Me Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...

inside a virtual machine. * Win4Lin Home allowed users to only emulate applications. * Win4Lin Pro offered users the ability to install a fully virtualized

. The Win4Lin 9x/Pro (henceforth the only technology discussed in this section) operates by running Windows applications in a

virtual machine In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

. Unlike

Wine Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...

CrossOver Crossover may refer to: Entertainment Albums and songs * ''Cross Over'' (Dan Peek album) * ''Crossover'' (Dirty Rotten Imbeciles album), 1987 * ''Crossover'' (Intrigue album) * ''Crossover'' (Hitomi Shimatani album) * ''Crossover'' (Yoshino ...

which are emulation-based, virtualization-based software such as

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

or Win4Lin require users to have a Windows license in order to run applications since they must install a full copy of Windows within the virtual machine. Unlike

, however, Win4Lin provides the virtual guest operating system with access to the native Linux filesystem, and allows the Linux host to access the guest's files even when the virtual machine is not running. In addition to the convenience this offers,

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

found in their 2002 review that Win4Lin gained significant performance over VMware by using the native Linux filesystem, but also noted that this approach (unlike VMware's) limited the installation of only one version of Windows on a Win4Lin machine. When the Win4Lin application starts it displays a window on the Linux desktop which contains the Windows desktop environment. Users can then install or run applications as they normally would from within Windows. Win4Lin supports Linux printers, internet connections, and Windows networking, but , does not support DirectX and by extension most Windows games. They also offered Win4BSD for

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), which was based on Research Unix. The first version of FreeBSD was released in 1993. In 2005, FreeBSD was the most popular ...

History

Win4Lin was initially based on

software originally developed at

Locus Computing Corporation Locus Computing Corporation was formed in 1982 by Gerald J. Popek, Charles S. Kline and Gregory I. Thiel to commercialize the technologies developed for the LOCUS distributed operating system at UCLA. Locus was notable for commercializing si ...

, and which changed hands several times until it ended in the assets of NeTraverse, which were purchased in 2005 by Win4Lin Inc., which introduced Win4Lin Pro Desktop. This was based on a 'tuned' version of

QEMU QEMU is a free and open-source emulator (Quick EMUlator). It emulates the machine's processor through dynamic binary translation and provides a set of different hardware and device models for the machine, enabling it to run a variety of guest ...

and KQEMU, and it hosted indows NTversions of Windows. In June 2006, Win4Lin released Win4VDI for Linux based on the same code base. Win4VDI for Linux served Microsoft Windows desktops to thin clients from a Linux server. Virtual Bridges discontinued support for Win4Lin 9x in 2007. The Win4Lin Pro Desktop product ceased to be supported in March 2010.

Reception

Many users reported that the 9x version ran windows software at near-native speed, even on quite low-powered machines, such as Pentium-IIs. Nicholas Petereley praised Win4Lin in two of his columns in the year 2000, for its significantly faster performance than its competitor

References

External links

Win4Lin 5.0 makes big improvements

Linux.com Linux.com is a website owned by the Linux Foundation. The goal of the site is to provide information about the developments and changes in Linux and related products. Linux.com offers free Linux tutorials, news and blogs, discussion forums and ...

, 2008
Win4Lin Pro Desktop 4.0 lags behind free alternatives

, 2007
Break the Hardware Upgrade Cycle with Win4Lin Windows Virtual Desktop Server

Linux Journal ''Linux Journal'' (''LJ'') is an American monthly technology magazine originally published by Specialized System Consultants, Inc. (SSC) in Seattle, Washington since 1994. In December 2006 the publisher changed to Belltown Media, Inc. in Houston ...

, 2007
Run Windows On Linux: Win4Lin Revisited
in4Lin Pro 3.0 review

Tom's Hardware ''Tom's Hardware'' is an online publication owned by Future plc and focused on technology. It was founded in 1996 by Thomas Pabst. It provides articles, news, price comparisons, videos and reviews on computer hardware and high technology. The si ...

, 2006
INQUIRER helps debug Win4Lin Pro
.7

The Inquirer ''The Inquirer'' (stylized as TheINQUIRER) was a British technology tabloid website founded by Mike Magee after his departure from ''The Register'' (of which he was one of the founding members) in 2001. In 2006 the site was acquired by Dutch ...

, 2006 *
Product Review — Running Windows on Linux
Win4Lin 2.7 vs. VMware Workstation 5.5.1., ''Open Source Magazine'', 2006
Review: Win4Lin Pro
.0

, 2005
A Look at Win4Lin 5.1

OSNews OSNews is a computing online newspaper. It originally focused on operating systems and their related technologies that launched in 1997, but is now aggregating consumer electronics news. The content is managed by a group of editors and the owner ...

, 2004
Review of Win4Lin 4.0

, 2002
VMware Express 2.0 and Win4Lin 2.0: A Comparison Review

, 2001
TreLOS's Win4Lin
(2000) {{Virtualization products Virtualization software Linux emulation software Discontinued software

Products and technology

History

Reception

See also

References

External links