[ale] Mainly Linux but a smidgen MS

[Dow Hurst]

For those who are dual booting or needing MS based software, I'd like to
suggest trying out vmware as an alternative.  I was just answering an
email on the ale list and had put in some stuff about vmware.  I
realized that really, unless there is some hardware that is unusual, you
don't have to dual boot.  Maybe games would be a problem.  I have a Dell
Latitude CPt laptop that I carry around from home to work.  I put SuSE
6.4 on it with great success.  Then I loaded the latest version of
vmware off the vmware website.  Installed and patched Win95 and Office97
with the latest patches.  Put on some other Win95 based software like
ChemX, ChemWindows, WSftp95.  I have to have a large amount of RAM and a
fast enough CPU.  The laptop has 192Mb RAM and a 333MHz Celeron.  The
full screen mode of Vmware is great and Win95 is responsive.  I have
turned off in Office97 the setting that controls "pretty scrolling"
which does slow down the display alot.  I am self sufficient for what I
need out of Win95 at this point.  Someone who needs games may not be at
all.

The virtual network uses DHCP to assign the virtual PC an address of
192.168.112.x from the range that you can set.  If you have enough RAM
and disk space, you may have any OS that runs on x86 architecture
running in a window just as I have Win95.  I had originally loaded Win98
successfully but blew that away as I wanted Win95 instead.

Any changes made to the virtual PC can be kept from being permanent.  So
if I want to try a new package, I can make vmware not allow changes to
the system to be permanent until I decide I like the results.  If the
package screws up the registry or the network settings, I just reboot
without allowing the changes to be final.  Presto! I am back to a
working unchanged system.

The price for vmware was cheap for me as I am on staff at an educational
institution.  I hope this suggests an alternative for those who can try
this out.  Best wishes,
Dow

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__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                   Office: 770-499-3428
Systems Support Specialist  Fax:    770-423-6744
1000 Chastain Rd.
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:dhurst at kennesaw.edu
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com
Kennesaw, GA 30144
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*Computational Chemistry is fun!*
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