Do you still use Windows sometimes? And why?

[bambuko]

...
Here are some CADs I've experimented with in Linux that worked fairly well:

The old TurboCAD 2d Learning edition, run in Wine -- this is available free elsewhere on the Internet -- do a search on TurboCAD Learning Editiion or LE.

This program is very full featured. Its main drawback is that it is old and can't read some of the newer .DXF formats.

And for the only really viable 3D CAD in Linux -- available free, though not free-source -- is CollabCAD from the India Ministry of Informatics -- again do a search on the Internet to find it.

I've run that in Knoppix, Kanotix and Ubuntu. I'd make a .pet of it here, but you can't freely redistribute it -- you have to get it from them.

I've periodically tried to run DesignCAD 3D Max and TurboCAD 3D in successive versions of Wine, but no go. Maybe some day.......

Thanks again Aitch for your input -- maybe the above will help another CAD seeker.

I'll have to try CollabCAD - thanks for the info
BTW guys, don't forget about Medusa and Varicad as "true" Linux solutions. Neither totally free (well Medusa4free is, subject to 6 monthly renewal of free licence and limitations on print size), but they come closest to what I am after

Chris

[vtpup]

Aitch, I've rewritten the guide for moving a full Win98SE install to a virtual machine it's at:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 227#251227

I haven't tried a Win2K virtual machine (gosh, you mean upgrade my Win98SE........nah.....just gradually abandoning it.)

The process would be essentially similar -- but no guarantees, obviously.

Some differences I can think of:

1.) NTFS instead of VFAT partition the virtual machine
2.) Win2k, as I remember it, didn't like being messed with once it was iinstalled -- bluescreened just for kicks every Wednesday and Sunday after the initial spalsh screen if you reconfigured hardware. Putting an existing partition into a new (virtual) machine might cause it to choke in outrage.

Win98 seemed pretty tolerant of things like:

Pulling a harddrive out of one machine and putting it into another. Generally it responded with "Found new Hardware" and popping up a wizard. Like twenty times as you sorted drivers out.

I don't know if Win2K will be as accomodating. But you could try it.

Let us know.....

[VK6FUN]

If puppy had some sort of non-segfaulting wine that was easy to set up I might be able to use it instead of ms but alas good nesting for profiling efficiency is resource-hungry. Whenever I have tried to wine them I get segfaults. I concede that puppy is the best computer program I have ever seen. It is like a doctor.
But not much use at work. The problem is new hardware depends for sales success on ms drivers not linux. There will always be catch-up going on in the gnu linux module caper. Barry Kauler is switched onto it.
his approach to the main weaknesses is the best I have seen.

Pete

[Aitch]

vtpup

thanks, though on 1st glance there look to be a few understanding assumptions......

1.) Install VMWare Player.

What are you using as your working OS while doing this?
Is this win or lin based? Which VMWare player version & how/where is it installed?

I know what you mean about W98s tolerance for moving h/ds
Shame more OSs can't do that

I have both 98SE & 2K in fat32 partitions, so I'm going to have to try it

SelfImage may work?

http://selfimage.excelcia.org/

good for moving images of h/ds even with a 'live' windoze system file, though not sure if it'll move to a VM, haven't tried that, but can't think why not.....

Bruce B is another W98/VM fan, though several times I've seen his howto it is CLI & I get lost somehow [I think he (also) uses Qemu+accelerator/virtualbox]

too many long dd instructions

my poor old brain gets a blue screen of its own

anyhow, thanks again

Aitch

[vtpup]

Aitch,

The VMWare player I originally used was installed into Ubuntu. I'm now trying to get Puppy set up with the player. Here's the thread on this forum:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=35356

Also, I've had a little difficulty getting it going on Puppy 4.11, but I'm sure the kinks will be ironed out shortly. I just downloaded the kernel source, and will try again tonight.

I haven't tried Qemu or Virtualbox, but was extremely impressed with VMWare player once VMWare Tools was installed. The emulation ran exactly like the W98SE original, and ran much faster than I expected. It still isn't sufficient speed to play games -- at least on my old hardware, but the speed for everything else was impressive.

I've tried selfimage, but could never get it working on my computers -- I don't know why. Seems like it would be a great addition.

Partimage works pretty well, except for a few quirks -- like not zipping files over 4 Gigs properly. I wasted a fair amount of time on that, because it gives no error messages. The file just doesn't work, and it takes a long time to create it.

The Parted Magic CD is nice because it has both partimage and Gparted, both of which are needed to create the VM.

[vtpup]

Okay, everything is sorted out. I'm now running a Win98SE virtual machine in VMWare Player 2.5 running on Puppy 4.11. The vm was built from an image of my wife's full Win98 install on her Dell GX60 desktop computer. It is running now on a Thinkpad T30 inside Puppy Linux.

I just ran her windows Nutri-Base program (no known equivalent in Linux) and it works fine. I actually have the whole VM in a file on a portable external hard drive -- it's about 2.7 gig, and it's running from there -- if I had a thumb drive big enough, that would work as well. It would then be Windows on a thumb drive.

Next I'm going to try to make an image of my desktop W98 installation, with all of its CAD and graphics programs and put it into a VM to run on the laptop Puppy.

Edit, update:

Yup, the desktop vm works great, and all Windows CAD programs function normally. So basically I can run anything I have from within a Puppy Linux session.

[KP3FT]

I use Puppy most of the time and BeOS, and only use Windows for apps that won't work in Linux. I would much prefer to never use Windows. After all these years of using every version from 3.1 to Vista, I simply hate the OS with all it's download updates, errors, slowing down, etc..
I was introduced to alternative OS's when we set up an FM radio station automation system that uses the BeOS operating system. I was blown away at how it ran so much smoother and faster than Windows. For example, I once accidentally opened 40+ mp3 songs in BeOS, and it opened every single one of them in separate Soundplay sessions and played them all simultaneously on an old Dell P3 500 mhz Optiplex desktop PC. Try opening 40+ Windows Mediaplayer sessions in Windows and have them all play at the same time...

[nitehawk]

Just got two more really nice (slightly older) computers for Christmas. One came with WinXP pro,.....
found out that to download the Service Pack 3, with my dialup, is about 350mb,.....and estimated to take 12 hours! Whaaaaaaaaaa?????
I don't think so.

[vtpup]

Judging by the historic geometric progression in performance loss of Msoft products you can expect 26 hours of downloads next year, and 52 hours the year after that. Windows machines will require 8 processors at that point and 16 gigabytes of RAM to run. They will beset by 4 million viruses, trojans, rootkits and other yet-to-be coined compu-jive terms. Power supplies to run compatible computers will draw a killowatt each of power. The user agreement on starting a new installation of any Microsoft product will exceed in length the novel War and Peace. A digital tic-tac-toe game will be included in the purchase. It will be upgradeable to a Professional Version, in which the computer will actually act as an opponent. The Professional version will also include several security fixes for the game.

[Aitch]

.........

A digital tic-tac-toe game will be included in the purchase.....

.....for users to play, whilst waiting to see if windoze will allow them access to their programs & data, today....

ROFL, vtpup, thanks

Aitch

[01micko]

My lappy still has 'doze installed but hasn't been booted in months. I use mainly Puppy412 on it, run live with a 2gig save file. Aso use Buddapup, and Firehydrant on it.

The box I'm on now hasn't booted 'doze for ages, maybe a year. I plan to wipe it to retrieve the space. I run Mandriva, Puppy 411(frugal). and woof002 (live) on it.

[vanoverw]

I'm not into games so I only boot Linux. For me distros offer so much my boot will always be Linux or perhaps BSD.

[vanoverw]

Aitch, I've rewritten the guide for moving a full Win98SE install to a virtual machine it's at:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 227#251227

I haven't tried a Win2K virtual machine (gosh, you mean upgrade my Win98SE........nah.....just gradually abandoning it.)

The process would be essentially similar -- but no guarantees, obviously.

Some differences I can think of:

1.) NTFS instead of VFAT partition the virtual machine
2.) Win2k, as I remember it, didn't like being messed with once it was iinstalled -- bluescreened just for kicks every Wednesday and Sunday after the initial spalsh screen if you reconfigured hardware. Putting an existing partition into a new (virtual) machine might cause it to choke in outrage.

Win98 seemed pretty tolerant of things like:

Pulling a harddrive out of one machine and putting it into another. Generally it responded with "Found new Hardware" and popping up a wizard. Like twenty times as you sorted drivers out.

I don't know if Win2K will be as accomodating. But you could try it.

Let us know.....

Any knowledge or success doing this with Millenium. The OS is factory installed and runs at 1000Mh and 120Mb memory. I'm amazed that it works!

[01micko]

Any knowledge or success doing this with Millenium. The OS is factory installed and runs at 1000Mh and 120Mb memory. I'm amazed that it works!

Millenium is vfat, which is good, should react simarlily to win98SE. It was a knee jerk upgrade to 98SE(as you may know). It was made to look less 'dos' dependant. Should work. (speculating though!)

[mickee]

I have Win 7 Pro on my main PC. I use it a lot for posting to my web pages, etc, also use Office 2007, and I like Outlook. (Syncs well with my BlackBerry, and Windows needs to sync with my Zune) -- now before y'all call me a Microsoft guy, I also dual boot that PC with ubuntu (Karmic Koala). I also have a Mac mini G4, with OSX. I recently put puppy linux on my aging laptop and since Feb 8th, I have been 99% on the pup.

Considering that before puppy linux, this laptop was toast, and stuck with Windows Me, I think that says a lot, that I am able to still do my postings and email (both using Seamonkey)...

So, I use Windows when I have to and use linux when I want to. Incidentally, my puppy laptop is now faster at internet and email etc, than my full size up-to-date PC.

Puppy Linux ROX!

[ken geometrics]

So, I use Windows when I have to and use linux when I want to. Incidentally, my puppy laptop is now faster at internet and email etc, than my full size up-to-date PC.

Puppy Linux ROX!

There is a good reason to install something like Win98 under VirtualBox if you want to run programs under wine. Some programs simply won't install if you run the install under wine. If, however, you run the install on the VirtualBox, you can then copy the files into the wine and the program will run.

A nice thing about doing it under VirtualBox is that you can invent a machine with no network card, make a backup of the C: image do the install, copy the files away and then replace the C: image with the backup. This way program A can't step on the DLLs of program B so you can manually see what DLLs you really need.

The lack of a network card prevents some installs from looking out onto the web so it doesn't import the latest viruses.

[mickee]

So, I use Windows when I have to and use linux when I want to. Incidentally, my puppy laptop is now faster at internet and email etc, than my full size up-to-date PC.

Puppy Linux ROX!

There is a good reason to install something like Win98 under VirtualBox if you want to run programs under wine. Some programs simply won't install if you run the install under wine. If, however, you run the install on the VirtualBox, you can then copy the files into the wine and the program will run.

A nice thing about doing it under VirtualBox is that you can invent a machine with no network card, make a backup of the C: image do the install, copy the files away and then replace the C: image with the backup. This way program A can't step on the DLLs of program B so you can manually see what DLLs you really need.

The lack of a network card prevents some installs from looking out onto the web so it doesn't import the latest viruses.

I use VirtualBox on my Win7 to run XP and also another ubuntu

[Trobin]

All the time. I have a desktop that works well with Puppy. A laptop that No puppy that I've ever tried was able to connect to the wireless, and a net book with a built in rocket stick.

[Colonel Panic]

I was given a copy of Windows ME recently, which I use to play early Windows games and also for text editing / basic word processing with PolyEdit. At the moment I don't use the machine to connect to the Internet or do much multimedia stuff, so ME's shortcomings don't seem to affect me.

[DM was on fire!]

I run Windows XP on a Dell Optiplex GX520 with no issue, but the thing is offline so I never have to worry about viruses or spyware or any of that junk associated with Windows. If I want to go online, I use Linux. No exceptions.