How To Run Windows Inside Linux With Win4Lin

One Problem - Lack Of Applications

As an operating system, Linux is ready to use. The main problems for Linux continue to be the lack of applications and driver support. In this article and the ones that follow, I will be looking into some solutions to the first problem, the current lack of applications; however, the driver issue deserves a brief comment.

While anyone should be able to get Linux running on a PC, the lack of popular office productivity software continues to keep Linux from reaching the desktop. Until there is a perceived market for Linux, software companies will not port their popular applications, but until popular applications are available, the average user cannot run Linux. In order to solve this chicken-and-egg problem, there is an ongoing effort in the Linux community to create these applications. Open source projects such as OpenOffice.org and KOffice have come a long way toward usability, but these projects and other like them are still "beta." Currently, no office suites for Linux are as stable and full-featured as their Windows counterparts.

One way you can run the most popular applications under Linux is by using a migration tool. With a migration tool, you could, for instance, create a graphic in The Gimp and import it into a PowerPoint presentation, all at acceptable levels of performance and without ever having to reboot. In this article, I will describe an emulator called Win4Lin that allows you to run Windows applications under Linux, but first, I would like to take a slight detour and look at early attempts at Windows-to-Linux migration.