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by lproven·5y ago·view on hn ↗
> I use Wine too, for things like Netscape, Mosaic, etc.

OK. I used to do that for IE but I haven't needed it in about a decade.

> Microsoft apps run much better in a VM in my experience, because of how tightly > coupled their development was with WinAPI.

Some do. Not all. WINE is also impressively good now.

> I already need a VM for IE, which definitely does not work right in Wine for me

That, I certainly believe.

> so why not Office too.

A whole bunch of reasons.

[1] No need for a Windows licence;

[2] Speed of startup;

[3] Much lower resource usage;

[4] Better integration with the host OS;

[5] No need to maintain a copy of Windows inside a VM with updates;

[6] No vulnerabilities in the host OS because there isn't one;

[7] Windows that freely mix with native windows, not in a single seamless plane for all of them.

I'm sure I could come up with more given more than a minute's thought. :-)

1 comments
[1] No need for a Windows licence;

I'm pretty sure I have several Windows 95 and Me licenses around somewhere.

[2] Speed of startup;

I think my Windows 95 VM starts up faster than Wine.

[3] Much lower resource usage;

About even here, I'd say.

[4] Better integration with the host OS;

I like my separate "writing nook", thanks.

[5] No need to maintain a copy of Windows inside a VM with updates;

Hardly ever any more updates for 95 coming out nowadays.

[6] No vulnerabilities in the host OS because there isn't one;

There are vunlerabilities in every piece of software I use, to my knowledge.

[7] Windows that freely mix with native windows, not in a single seamless plane for all of them.

As I said above, writing nook :)

You do you.

A decade or so back, I finally got a machine powerful enough to usefully run a VM or 2 without killing foreground performance.

I figured I wanted the lightest-weight version of Windows that would do what I needed, so I tried a bunch: Win95B, Win98SE, NT 3.51, NT 4, Win2K, XP.

9x was eliminated straight away: it could only do 640*480 and didn't have good enough networking to get anything in or out.

NT 3/4 were about as limited but could do better networking.

W2K worked well but couldn't run the VirtualBox guest additions.

So I ended up with TinyXP, which ran in 40MB off the ISO image (although more like 220MB once fully-updated).

There's no point for me having my word-processor in a sealed box. I need to get files in and out. I want to be able to put stuff in Dropbox. I want to be able to get it in and out of LibreOffice and Gmail. I want to start in a Linux text editor, add some info in LibreOffice, save as .DOC and open it in Word to work on the structure. I want to be able to copy the name of the speaker, the talk, the time and subject and paste them direct from my browser into my notes.

It's host integration that means this isn't a toy for the sake of the thing. If I wanted that, I could run Wordsworth under UAE, or Word 5.1 under System 7 in Basilisk.

This is a tool to get work done. For that, I want the host environment to be as invisible as possible.

If you don't, well, fine. But your choices would be useless for me.