Win4Lin
 | It has been suggested that Virtual Bridges be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since October 2009. |
Win4Lin is a proprietary software application for Linux which allows users to run a copy of Microsoft Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000 or XP applications on their desktop.
Virtual Bridges, Inc. is the software company successor to NeTraverse and Win4Lin Inc., developers of Win4Lin software. In addition to Linux, Virtual Bridges develops fully supported products similar to Win4Lin for Solaris and BSD.
| Developer(s) | Virtual Bridges, Inc (since September 2007) |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Full virtualization |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | win4lin.com |
Overview
The system works by acting in a similar way to a virtual machine, in that it provides an environment for the Windows operating system to run, and as such one must still have a copy of Windows to use with it.
The Win4Lin application in essence displays a window on a Linux desktop which contains the Windows desktop environment. As an alternative, the Windows environment can be run full screen, outside of the desktop environment to save on desktop real estate.
Win4Lin is designed with business users in mind, and as such, does not support features such as MIDI, in favor of support for Microsoft Office-style application compatibility.
History
Win4Lin was based on Merge software developed by engineers at Locus Computing Corporation, founded by Gerald J. Popek and others in 1982, which was later taken over by a company called Platinum Technology. 'Merge' was originally developed to run DOS/Windows 3.1 under UNIX System V Release 2 on an AT&T 6300+ personal computer that contained an Intel 80286 processor. AT&T announced availability on October 9, 1985, referring to the bundled Merge software as SimulTask. Later Merge was enhanced to make use of the VM86 mode provided by the Intel 80386 processor; that version was offered with Microport SVR3 starting in 1987, and subsequently with SCO Unix.
The Merge technology was then bought by a company called DASCOM which was in turn bought by IBM. A company called TreLOS was then spun off that continued the development of the virtual machine software and created Win4Lin. TreLOS and LastFoot.com merged in 2000 to form NeTraverse, Inc.
In early 2005 the assets of NeTraverse were purchased to form Win4Lin Inc. which introduced Win4Lin Pro Desktop - this is based on a 'tuned' version of QEMU, and KQEMU and it hosts [Windows NT]-versions of Windows. In June 2006, Win4Lin released Win4VDI for Linux based on the same code base. Win4VDI for Linux serves Microsoft Windows desktops to thin clients from a Linux server.
In September 2006, Win4Lin announced a change of the company name to Virtual Bridges with the release of Win4BSD Pro Desktop, a port of the product to FreeBSD and PC-BSD. Win4BSD is now offered at no charge to non-commercial customers.
Solaris support followed in May 2007 with the release of Win4Solaris Pro Desktop and Win4VDI for Solaris.
In December 2008, Virtual Bridges announced the VERDE product (based from same code base as Win4VDI) which serves Linux Desktops from Linux servers. Win4VDI and VERDE are now Virtual Bridges' products for Desktop Virtualization.
Win4Lin Pro and Win4VDI use "full" virtualization, whereas Win4Lin 9x was an example of paravirtualization. Many users reported that the 9x version ran windows software at near-native speed, even on quite low-powered machines, such as Pentium-IIs.
Virtual Bridges discontinued support for Win4Lin 9x, but provides the latest version 5.1 and its supporting files as is in their ftp archive. The latest kernel support files archived are for kernels 2.4.29 and 2.6.14.3. [1]
See also
- Comparison of platform virtual machines for a list of related virtualization software products
- Popek and Goldberg virtualization requirements
- x86 virtualization