Parallels Workstation, alternative to Win4Lin

I just tried a new Virtual Machine manager, Parallels Workstation. I've been using Win4Lin for many years but Win4Lin9x seems to have reached the end of it's life and Win4LinPro 3 doesn't work. A couple of days ago I saw a review of Parallels Desktop for the Mac so I decided to look at their website to see if they have a Linux version, they do. I just installed it on Fedora Core 5 and then installed Win2KSP4 on it. Here are my impressions.

Parallels Workstation works very well. The current version has one major deficiency, it has no mechanism for mounting Linux directories directly, you have to use SAMBA shares. SAMBA is slow compared to a local directory and in my opinion it's a security risk if you use Wireless networking because the security mechanism for SAMBA is just pbuttwords. Ordinarily I would never export a directory on my network, in either NFS or SAMBA, I do all of my communication via ssh (which uses RSA not pbuttwords) and I share files via CVS. I buttume they'll fix this eventually. Aside from the SAMBA issue I like Parallels Workstation. It's performance is good, not as fast as Win4Lin9x but still good enough. It's performance is much better then Win4LinPro which is pretty easy to do because Win4LinPro runs like molbuttes in winter. It also seems to works for all of the things that I need it for. My list of required Windows applications is pretty small, Word 2K, Acrobat 5.05, Quickbooks Pro 2005, Quicken, Clarisworks and Turbo Tax. Quickbooks Pro 2005 won't run on Win4Lin9x and Acrobat 5.0.5 doesn't work on Win4LinPro 3. Quickbooks is now a Win2K or XP only application which is why it won't run on Win4Lin9x. On Win4LinPro I can't convert large Word documents to PDF, Acrobat gets about half way through and stalls for ever. Word2K + Acrobat works fine on Win4Lin9x but you can't run Win4Lin9x on Fedora Core 5 because there is no kernel patch available for 2.6.15 or 2.6.16. Parallels Workstation ran both Quickbooks Pro 2005 and Word2K + Acrobat without any problems. The conversion time for the document was as fast or faster then on Win4Lin9x. The primary performance difference between Win4Lin9x and Parallels Workstation is in the GUI and I chalk that up to the differences between Win98 and Win2K.

Here is a summary of what I like and dislike on each product,

Win4Lin9x Good Extremely fast, by far the fastest interactive performance of any product. Linux directories can be mapped as Windows disks Excellent integration with Linux, you can cut and paste between Linux and Windows applications. Win4Lin desktop window can be scaled to any size, just like any other Linux program.

Bad End of life. Win4Lin seems to have stopped development on it. The last kernel patch is 2.6.14.3 beta. Can't support many new Windows programs because they are 2K or XP only.

Win4LinPro 3.0 Good No kernel patch Runs on 64 bit Linux as well as 32 bit Linux

Bad Awful performance Inadequate choice of Window sizes, 1024x768 which is too small or 1280x1024 which is too big (the window border and the Gnome tool bars take space so you can't fit a 1280x1024 Win4Lin window on a 1280x1024 screen). Mounts your whole home directory instead of just the directories that you want to allow Windows access to. Doesn't work (the aforementioned Acrobat problem).

Parallels Workstation Good Good performance. GUI is not as fast as Win4Lin9x but it's fast enough. Program performance seems to be native speed. Supports multiple virtual machines. You can have many VMs. Supports Win9x, Win2K, WinXP, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD and OS2 as guest OSes. It's a direct compebreastor to VMWare in this application. Reasonable range of display sizes. It's not infinitely variable like Win4Lin9x, but it has choices that work. Every program that I tried worked.

Bad No direct mount for Linux directories, requires SAMBA.