Win4Lin

[tbobz]

Hi all-As a proud owner of the new version of Win4Lin I have been dreaming of my ideal distro. Knoppix with W4L included. Is this possible?
TIA-Tbobz

[Stephen]

Hi all-As a proud owner of the new version of Win4Lin I have been dreaming of my ideal distro. Knoppix with W4L included. Is this possible?
TIA-Tbobz

No it is a commercial product.

[aay]

Knoppix does include the bochs emulator though. I have played with it a little bit, but was unable to get to work completely. I noticed it was recently updated so if you're interested you may want to try that.

[tbobz]

Stephen-I have understood from other posts in these forums that in a personal remaster one could include non free software. Is this not so? If it is, then my question remains. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was just wondering if it were technically possible to remaster Knoppix with a functioning version of W4L. I would love to be able to access my scramdisks.
Yours-Tbobz

Aay-I tried bochsconf but received a message that neither bximage or create disk was found. Any tips?

Anyway, thanks to both of you for your responses.

[aay]

Aay-I tried bochsconf but received a message that neither bximage or create disk was found. Any tips?

I tried to get bochs working once with Win 98. After a good deal of tweaking it was actually going pretty well. I got the Win 98 disk to boot. Unfortunatley I had this wierd quirk where windows was trying to start installing, and then it gave me some sort of message that it couldn't find the Win 98 cd. I messed with it for a while but never could get that issue resolved. Maybe I'll try it again sometime. My best advice is to look at the documentation here: http://bochs.sourceforge.net/

Be prepared to roll up your sleaves though. I didn't find it to be the easiest process.

[Stephen]

Stephen-I have understood from other posts in these forums that in a personal remaster one could include non free software. Is this not so? If it is, then my question remains. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was just wondering if it were technically possible to remaster Knoppix with a functioning version of W4L. I would love to be able to access my scramdisks.
Yours-Tbobz

I see, yes you can re-master and add non-free software you should check the liscense of win4lin to see if this is allowed to be included in a re-master for your personal use. As to whether you can get it to work the only way to find out would be to give it a try I have never used W4L so can not comment on that aspect.

[probono]

Isn't the win4lin kernel freely available on the Net? A knoppix remaster with that kernel would be very useful because you simply could install the win4lin userland applications into your (persistent) home.

[aay]

Your're right about the win4lin kernel. It's freely downloadable here , but freely downloadable doesn't mean completely free. I don't think their kernel is available under the gpl. So I doubt it could be included in Knoppix. If I'm wrong about the gpl tell me, because it would be neat to do this. Hopefully most peole know that having a win4lin enabled kernel does you no good unless you have their other software which will enable you to run windows (98 and ME) in linux. I've got it and I think it's a pretty good product, but I haven't really messed with it since I was running Red Hat.

[probono]

I don't think their kernel is available under the gpl. So I doubt it could be included in Knoppix. If I'm wrong about the gpl tell me, because it would be neat to do this.

A GPL product (such as the Linux kernel) cannot be legally modified without making the modification also GPL. Paragraph 2 b) of the GPL says:
"You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. "
So, the win4lin kernel is also GPL.

[aay]

Very true. Why the heck didn't I think of that. I doubt Klaus would do this but it would be nice to have a Knoppix disk that would do this.