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Wine applicability (was: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments)

Alex Martelli aleax at aleax.it
Fri Dec 28 12:06:23 EST 2001 
"Cameron Laird" <claird at starbase.neosoft.com> wrote in message
news:200112281642.KAA24897 at starbase.neosoft.com...
    ...
> >that's my primary need -- Word with O'Reilly customized macros &c,
> >as that's what I'm required to use for one of the books.  So, I
> O'REILLY MAKES YOU USE WORD MACROS?!??!!?
> I've got to talk with those boys.  That
> strikes me as an atrocity.

"makes" is probably an overbid.  The Cookbook I'm doing in XML with
a custom DTD, and that's just fine - I get to use VIM:-).  But for
the Nutshell, that wasn't an option.

> >did not try Wine extensively on other tasks.  I did try VMWare (a
> >beta) and found it somewhat clunky, ponderous, and slow, although
> >maybe that was its beta nature; anyway, I wasn't motivated to plunk
> >down several hundred dollars for the final version to find out.

> I have acquaintances who swear by VMWare.

So do I, and it was on their hearty recommendation that I gave
that beta a good try.  If the problems are indeed all related to
it BEING a beta, then VMWare's producers had better make some
sort of time-limited try-it-out or something like that, without
the speed and resource-consumption problems -- I think my machine
is adequate (Athlon 1.2 GHz, 256 M DDRAM PC2100), yet I was not
happy with interactive performance (Word '97 subjectively running
worse than on my ultralight laptop, which has a Pentium III-600
and just 64 MB of slower RAM -- I tried the two MS OS's for which
I have licenses, Win98 and NT/4; maybe Win/2K and/or Office/2K
work better with VMWare, but I'm not going to splurge for those
in addition to VMWare itself -- that's running to well over 1K
euros for something a few tens of euros for win4lin, plus my
already-paid-for Win98 and Office97 licenses, already give me
quite satisfactorily).


> >some files with the Windows Media Player.  I do get occasional
> >"crashes" (of the simulated Win98 environments), but roughly as
> >often as a real Win98 crashes under similar usage, so I don't
> >think that's win4lin's fault.
> Interesting testimony.  Thanks.

You're welcome!


Alex
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