[ILUG] ntfs / ntfs-3g write + VMWare running Windows under Linux vs. WINE reliability ?

[Michael Conry]

I have a bit of experience of
a) supporting relatives with computer needs, and trying to get them to Linux
b) virtual machines to bridge the Windows/Linux gap

on (a), one caveat is that once you have him on Linux, you'll probably
be his only line of support because he's unlikely to have other Linux
admins in his social circle, and when he tells people about something
he'd like to do with "Thunderbird", they'll probably look a bit blank.
 (I had my father talking to my cousin, who was working in IBM, later
Microsoft, later Apple about something he found tricky in KMail, to
which he gets a blank response: result, he felt he was saying
something dumb or using the terminology all wrong).  That said, if
you're already in that role it might make your life easier.

The solution I currently use for (b) is to use the opensource (Ubuntu)
Openbox packages.  When you install the extras package, you can
declare a folder on your Linux partitions to be shared with the
openbox windows system.  To the Windows machine it looks like a mapped
network drive, to the linux machine it is just a folder.  No special
file-system requirements (it's on your linux file-system).  The whole
thing is very easy to setup. (I've experimented with KVM, Xen, VMware,
etc., at different stages, but often had small problems with Win on
Lin, but never found them as simple as this).  You can even set it up
so that the MSWin windows appear on the linux desktop.

Michael