I feel both angry and sad when I see that without any applications running Windows XP is using 10% of my CPU and 300 MB RAM. However, as far as trading is concerned, these are a couple more emotions that have to be kept in check. Unfortunately, tradestation or ensign don't come for linux/bsd, and I don't really trust the stability of wine. It has crashed on me more than once. There was a time a couple years back when I exclusively using Redhat and then FreeBSD. FreeBSD is something that if you appreciate simplicity, efficiency, and stability.. you will immediately fall in love with it. I have only recently installed Gentoo and still tweaking it on an old system I had. So far, I like it, but not sure that I like it enough to totally give up on FreeBSD. However, as far as operating systems go, I guess the end justifies the means. If you want to trade in a well-supported (if not so stable) environment, you have to stick to Windows.
I agree. I will dig deeper into this as I don't yet understand. I trust a specialized company like PSSC Labs won't recommend the boards unless they are really good. I will report what I find. Thanks, Nitro! agrau
Wine has given me not so many problems, but more than often, menues are unreadable or plain ugly. I have dropped wine in favor of VMWare - they did a _!!fantastic!!_ job building virtual machines under Linux. I have yet to find the Micro$oft application that doesn't run on my linux box. My only hope is that they will be able to deliver under their new owner EMC.
In the opposite direction, I get my linux fix by running fedora in a vmware virtual machine under XP. Vmware is flawless for me, and I would reccommend it for anyone who has a reasonably powerful machine (i've got 2.4ghz p4, 1gb ram) and doesn't want to deal with dual-booting hassles.
Hi laziz, I also used to do this. In fact VMware is great in both ways: Linux host or Windows host. I believe that if you are serious about Linux, you should do it the other way around. Otherwise you stay chained to M$. In my experience, transition is not that easy though, especially if you are stuck with about 10 years worth of NT-based apps. I gave up VMWare Windows hosting 2 years ago. Although I have VMWare on Linux, I still run often on Win2000 and WinXP natively. Fully deployed Windows application using multimonitors, database and files spread over many partitions are awkward to run in their full extent in VMWare. More limited apps, no problem. My final aim is to convert all the Win apps into native Linux apps. FWIW, if you keep sticking to Windows, having Linux on VMWare is only gaming - it doesn't get you anywhere in the long run. In my opinion, this is only good as a startoff. Be good, nononsense
I agree with you, but long gone are the days where I was serious about linux (I built and administered a cluster of alpha 8400's, plus some 4TB of Symmetrix hw, back in the day when a TB was a big deal). Before that, downloaded linux 1.12 (slackware early 1995) onto diskettes and bootstrapped the rest of the install (no dual-boot with such a small hd) once I got the modem working. Having fully recovered from my sysadmin days, and the later experiences as a developer/consultant, I'm content taking the easy way out offered by XP + vmware (which I use for dabbling in lisp). Sure, XP is bloatware, but my uptimes are phenomenal. The big resource hog applications (e.g. Neuroshell) I use will never be ported to linux, and running them under WINE or its commercial variant seems like a nightmare waiting to happen. I'm not a developer, although I pretended to be one with some alacrity and generous compensation. For someone who enjoys writing code, your way is optimal. FWIW, if one is developing 'hard' edge-based solutions, the return on building *nix-based interfaces to quote-providers, and analysis software might be exceedingly worthwhile (in terms of reliability and infosec), especially if you're at the point of building FIX-based solutions (openFIX seems to be doing well). Kind Regards, Laz