[AuckLUG] Deserting Windows for Linux ...

[Daniel Pittman]

David Love <zed at zed.net.nz> writes:

> I am a relative newcomer to the mailing list.  So if my request is
> "not on", please forgive me.
>
> At present I run Windows XP and RISC OS (through an emulator) on one 
> PC, and had SuSE 10.1, together with Mepis on another, until I 
> reformatted it with Windows 2000 to give to my daughter.
>
> I enjoyed using SuSE 10.1 and it has led me to form an intention to go 
> over to Linux (probably SuSE 10.2) and leave the Windows world 
> altogether but it not possible while I use a genealogy programme 
> written for that OS.  I know that there are a couple of genealogy 
> programmes for Linux but I prefer to stay with Family Historian.
>
> The main PC has an AMD-Athlon 64, 3500 processor, 1GB RAM and 2 HD 
> (one I think is IDE and the other SATA) each of 100 MB.
>
> What I want to do is to install SuSE 10.2 on one of the HDs and other 
> distros on the second one - say Mandriva, Kubuntu, and Mepis. The main 
> distro used would be SuSE 10.2.
>
> This just leaves the problem as to how I continue using Family
> Historian.  I understand that it runs on Linux using CrossOver Office
> - and possibly WINE - but rather like the idea of using Xen. I have no
> idea whether this is possible.

Well, using WINE may work.  Using Xen requires that you have a system
with hardware virtualization support to run Windows -- which, I believe,
is code-named "Pacifica" and is only in the most recent Athlon64 CPUs.

You can run VMWare on the machine without that support, though, so that
is also an option.  

Regards,
        Daniel
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