Dear Lazyweb,

I need help installing Windows.

I have a class this semester which strongly encourages the use of software for generating reports (Minitab). The problem is, the software only runs on Windows. I don't want to spend hours in a lab. I also can't justify dedicating actual hardware for something as single-purposed as this, so I've decided to stick it in an emulator and hope for the best. For the record, I'm still not convinced of Wine's abilities to not suck.


Answer more these questions four:

What's the best emulator to use? I'm eyeballing Qemu and VMWare at the moment, but I'll consider others if you can make a compelling arguement. I really need it to be gratis--If I had money I'd just buy the hardware and be done with it. I've had some experience with Qemu but only in it's SPARC-on-x86 incarnation, so the faked hardware is quite different. I'd really like something that'll be able to redraw the framebuffer pretty responsively and runs at near the host's native processor speed.

What Windows distro is the best? Through the magical back alley dealings of the CS dept and Microsoft, I can grab Windows 2003 Server, Windows XP [vanilla|SP1|SP2], or (if I'm not mistaken) Windows 2000 somethingsomething edition. Is there a good reason to choose one over the other? Is there a good reason not to use the latest and greatest?

What can I expect to see in the memory department? This PC has 576 MB memory, currently split 268/298 free/used on a comfortable session. I've got an unused 376 MB swap parition. How much can I count on Windows plus app eating?

How big of a disk image should I create for this? I was guessing since the app is going to be probably around half a gig, probably 2 GB would be sufficient. Good enough? I'm planning on sticking the entire thing on an NFS export, so would it be advisable to leave the mount read/write, or just start saving filesystem deltas to my hard drive once I'm happy with the image?

So, what says ye?

Since you are only using one app, I would try wine. It probably won't work, but its worth a try.

As far as vmware/qemu, both should work fine. Qemu has the advantage in that it is fully free. Also, if you use the qemu accelerator it is much faster than vmware.

I don't have much experience as I rarely need to use windows at home, but I do remember getting qemu to work at one time.

Windows XP sp2 is what you want, and the amount of memory you want to give the virtual machine is up to you.

really... since ur just using it for the one app.. go for 2kpro.. its a smaller install..kinda and is less system tasking. plus its a lil faster from my experience. youll definaly want a 2 gig hdd.. and if you go with xp.. depending on how big minitab is you may even need 2.5gig. ram wise anything above 128 is fine for 2k, 256 recomended though and for xp 256 is fine, but more is better as usuall.

as for the cross platform shit.... i have no idea... comming from windows ive got microsoft virtual machine which works wounders.. but as for the toher way.. like i said no idea

Grab VMWare Server. It's free and works quite well, as long as you aren't doing 3D acclerated stuff.

EDIT:
Does Minitab require 2K/XP? If not, Windows 98 might be a lightweight alternative.

Gogo Win3.1!

win 3.1 I chose you

last time I checked, you could still pick up an original copy of 3.51 at petersons'

I'm as much of a fan of retro computing as any self-respecting geek, but there's only so much self-abuse I'm willing to tolerate. Progman and winfile sure bring back memories, though.

The system requirements for Minitab aren't nearly as steep as I thought they would be. 98 Second Edition doesn't sound like too bad of an idea. Anybody ever try running it in a VM? I've heard pre-NT editions of Windows had idle loop and timing problems when run in a container, but I don't know if that's actually true or just rumblings from the rumor mill.

I'll poke at it with a sharp stick over this coming weekend. Qemu is going to get top billing as of the moment since it's already installed, but I'll snoop out what I can regarding VMWare as well.

Any other ideas/tips/obscenely-dated-software-shoutouts?

I would stay away from the 9x stuff, it was great at the time but it is so outdated, and does not handle multitasking at all. I run microsoft almost exclusively, and i would recommend windows 2k It has more or less the same functionality as XP and is a lot less of a system resource hog.