[AuckLUG] Deserting Windows for Linux ...

[David Love]

In message <87ac0lt1yn.fsf at rimspace.net>
          Daniel Pittman <daniel at rimspace.net> wrote:

> 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.

My machine is just over a year old, so I doubt it qualifies.

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

Just been reading LinuxUser & Developer magazine - issue 67 which has 
an article on the Parallels virtualisation software.  It mentions that 
it supports the Intel virtualisation technology and is due to support 
AMD's in a future release.  Would this be an alternative way to go?

David
--
David Love
Happiness is a way of seeing good in everything and everybody.