BSD and Linux vs MS

[Roger Hardiman]

Freddy,

> Now running 3.3 and linuxbase 5.2 of course. I would like to either run
> VMware ( www.vmware.com <http://www.vmware.com> ) or StarOffice 5.1 for
> linux on my BSD box(es). But there seems to be some incompatibility with
> these.

VMWare will not run on FreeBSD as it is effectivly a linux device
driver.
FreeBSD can run Linux application software, but not linux device
drivers.

StarOffice 5.1....
Well, 6 months ago, it could me made to run by editing a few
config scripts and applying a patch. I would have expected it to work
ok with FreeBSD 3.3 now, so I'll look into it.
However, StarOffice 3 is in the ports tree, which runs just great
although is rather old now.

 

> but I want to be able to run the MS office suite on FreeBSD.

On a technological note, this can be done a few ways.

You mentioned VMWare - This is an option in Linux.
A new open-source version called FreeMWare is under development but
not ready yet which may work on FreeBSD.

You can run the Bochs PC emulator. You may find it too slow.
Bochs emulates a whole PC on any computer as it emulates a 486 CPU.
(so you can run Bochs and Windows 98 on a Sun or Alpha)

Or you can run Wine, which is a Windows Emulator and will certainly
run older versions of MS Office.


bochs and wine are both in the FreeBSD ports tree.


Your final option is to have another PC with Windows on.
This PC does not need a monitor or keyboard. It must
be networed.
Using the VNC program, you can get the display from the
Windows machine in a window on your X Windows screen on
FreeBSD.

(it is like a remote X session effectivly)

This means MS Office is running on a real Windows Operating system
so you'll have no funny problems.

Roger