Arch Linux

ivka

Member

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 15

wine or virtual box

Wine or virtual box- what is batter for rendiment of my computer if I need some windows' programm ?
Does wine consume some resources of CPU when I don't using it?

Beemer

Member

Registered: 2012-05-02

Posts: 13

Re: wine or virtual box

It depends on what you need.

VirtualBox:
     Requires MS Windows license
     Most applications will work fine "out of the box" since you are running actual 'MS Windows'
     Most games will have problems or will not run at all due to graphics hardware emulation/virtualization issues.
     Will take up a good amount of resources while running since it's emulating/virtualizing a full computer.

WINE:
     Does not require a MS Windows license
     Translates (not emulates) MS Windows programming calls to Linux versions.
     Applications/Games can work, not work, or work with problems.
     App/Game speed can vary from slow, equal to, or sometimes slightly better than running on MS Windows.
     WINE is not loaded if you are not running any applications that use it.
     When running an application with WINE, it will only use the resources necessary for that application.

If you have an office application (like MS Office, or Outlook), you may want VirtualBox as those type applications should run fine within a virtual computer running MS Windows.

If you're looking to run games, Virtual Box *might* work, but odds are you'll have a better chance/experience using WINE.

Last edited by Beemer (2012-11-19 15:02:24)

Morn

Member

Registered: 2012-09-02

Posts: 886

Re: wine or virtual box

Don't forget Qemu-kvm as a third option, although 3-D graphics support is even worse.

Of course Wine also has a compatibility list for games on their site that tells you exactly how well they run.

An annoying default feature of Wine is how it will take over file associations on your Linux desktop, so suddenly text files open in its clone of Notepad, etc. This can be disabled somehow, but I still don't like the security implications. E.g., what if you accidentally clicked on a Windows malware email attachment? Would Wine open and run it? It's probably a bit safer to use Windows in a virtual machine where you know exactly what it can and cannot do to the Linux system.

Last edited by Morn (2012-11-19 15:21:49)

Roken

Member

From: South Wales, UK

Registered: 2012-01-16

Posts: 1,253

Re: wine or virtual box

I tend to work on the basis that I'll try wine first, and if that doesn't work, then it's over to VB. The reason, I get better performance from wine than VB (lower overhead since I don't need to load Windows first).

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