BL> there's always a catch.Has anyone ever tried WinAxe?

AC> The catch is WinAxe is $US90+ versus Cygwin's X server, which
AC> is free, however Cygwin's X server may be harder to configure.
AC> Also, the display redirection might be a bit slow depending on
AC> the speed of your LAN. 

 Aha! Better all the time. Where can I get Cygwin? If I can configure
Sambo and make some sort of sense out of the Linux colonel, I reckon I
can configure anything.

 BTW, I'd be surprised if I even noticed the LAN. So far, it's
stunningly fast! I wish I'd set up a LAN years ago, and if this
Cygwin works (or WinAxe as a last resort... $130! aarrgh!) I'll
be quacking like a duck.

   The only thing is that I'm worried about electricity and these
400W power supplies runnign 24/7. How did it ever get so high! 400W...
I've never run that much electronic power in my life! And the monitor
must run around 120W itself. 

 Do you have any idea how much actual power a Pentium/1000 box
would use?

... [later]

 I found another Xseerver-thingie on my SuSe distribution CDs... vnc,
which is also free, was written by Olivetti and AT&T, and not only
works like a charm but works in reverse too... you can run a  Windows
box from Linux! I had five-minutes fun jumping back and forth between
the two machines, writing the same message to David. It's really
weird! Oh.. and best of all, there is *no* configuration. A Win95
wizard does the whole thing in Windows, and all you have to do is fill
in the name of the Linux machine. In Linux, you start the Linux vnc
server by typing "vncserver"... and that's it - you get a twm managed
Xwindows in Win98, with full access to the Linux box.

 My only complaint about this perfect program is its name. I find
"vnc" hard to remember (virtual network computer).

 I can see why people get rapt in networking. At present on two
machines I am running Win98, Linux and DOS6 (using dosemu in a Linux
window) and if I had two more computers I could run Win31 and an Apple
Mac as well! All out of this one Win 98 machine with no apparent loss
of speed...

 Apparently, there's a Java version, so I could link the other
computers crosswise, too. 

 How good is this?

... [later]

 KDE is buggy! It's always caused my problems on the Linux machine,
it even hangs Linux itself (just like Windows), so I switched to Gnome
and that one works much better. In fact, the problems I had with Gnome
were caused by KDE "pretending" to read the keyboard while it actually
used a generic driver that was old when Moses was still in the
bullrushes . I forget where I found the entry now (in one of the many
configuration files), but once I manually edited the correct keyboard
in, all my Gnome problems went away.

 So did the VNC problems with the GUI. It's interesting. VNC is not
exactly robust (not that it matters, just close it in Windows and
start again), and it seems to magnify the KDE bugs. I was getting
pages of warnings... Gnome just works. 

 I've been running Linux out of Windows for a while now, no problems
except that the desktop is about an inch too large, the 8-bit colours
are a bit wrong, and the GUI is definitely slow, even with 8-bit
colours. You couldn't run a video game on it and editing a picture
might be a problem, but for general use it's terrific.

... [even later]

 I'm beginning to see the value of Linux! At present, I'm typing this
in windows on the Windows machine, networking to the Linux box for the
files (and the modem), and at the same time Linus is running a KDE
desktop installing some more Gnome stuff (YAST2 is good at that sort
of thing), but I've also got a Gnome desktop running on the Windows
machine!

 It doesn't even seem to slow down much! Win98, eat your heart out!

 This seems to be the way to use a PC: run Windows networked to a
Linux box as a gateway, and use VNC to run the Linux machine. It would
make more sense to install the Linux motherboard *inside* the Windows
box.

Regards,
Bob



--- BQWK Alpha 0.5