Development status Discontinued Type Hypervisor | Operating system License Proprietary | |
Initial release 2006; 11 years ago (2006) Last release 5.5 / June 4, 2008; 8 years ago (2008-06-04) | ||
Win4Lin was a proprietary software application for Linux which allowed users to run a copy of Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows 2000 or Windows XP applications on their Linux desktop. Win4Lin was based on Merge 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.
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Products and technology
In 2006, Win4Lin came in three different versions, depending on the virtualization requirements of the user.
Win4Lin Pro used "full" virtualization, whereas Win4Lin 9x was an example of paravirtualization.
The Win4Lin 9x/Pro (henceforth the only technology discussed in this section) operates by running Windows applications in a virtual machine. Unlike Wine or CrossOver which are emulation-based, virtualization-based software such as VMware 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 VMware, 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 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 as of 2000, does not support DirectX and by extension most Windows games.
They also offered Win4BSD for FreeBSD.
History
Win4Lin was initially based on Merge software originally developed at Locus Computing Corporation, 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 and KQEMU, and it hosted [Windows NT]-versions 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 VMware.