Win4Lin Pro: Will it keep XP and IE6 vulnerabities secure from attack?
On Feb 21 Win4Lin announced its new Pro edition, saying Windows 2000 and Win XP applications can now be used safely by Linux users without fear of Microsoft's virus prone operating system affecting Linux computers. One part of the announcement is quoted as follows: "With the stable Linux architecture as its foundation, Win4Lin Pro protects PCs from Windows viruses and other prevalent forms of malware. Win4Lin Pro limits the impact of a Windows system failure or security flaw to only the virtual sandbox in which the applications are running. Thus Windows malfunctions cannot cause system-wide failures." I make frequent use of a one gigabite bible software program called Libronix from Logos Software whose tech support people said: "Libronix piggybacks on IE6 DLLs as a major part" of its integrated system. Since I need the IE6 DLLs, and cannot separate IE6 from Windows XP, I cannot use WINE. Rather, I need the entire Win XP installed in the Win4Lin Pro shell. I am assuming this would permit me to use Libronix in SuSE Pro 9.2. Does this sound correct to you guys? Will 'installing' Win XP into Win4Lin Pro (is that terminology correct?) open my Linux system to Windows' vulnerability to viruses and other bad things? The "virtual sandbox" discussed in paragraph two would contain, in my case, only WinXP (including IE6) and the Libronix Bible software. Since I write some biblical-thought papers, I would need a word processor available to extract and assimilate info from various Bible versions and many commentaries. OpenOffice.org would work OK but would be outside my "virtual sandbox". I don't know enough about how "vulnerabilities" are exploited to know if my computer system would be open to attack if I would use Win4Lin Pro this way. What do you much more knowlegeable people think? Many thanks for reading thru all this and for any help you may give. Andy
At 07:09 PM 3/1/2005 -0800, AndyYankovich wrote:
On Feb 21 Win4Lin announced its new Pro edition, saying Windows 2000 and Win XP applications can now be used safely by Linux users without fear of Microsoft's virus prone operating system affecting Linux computers. One part of the announcement is quoted as follows:
"With the stable Linux architecture as its foundation, Win4Lin Pro protects PCs from Windows viruses and other prevalent forms of malware. Win4Lin Pro limits the impact of a Windows system failure or security flaw to only the virtual sandbox in which the applications are running. Thus Windows malfunctions cannot cause system-wide failures."
I make frequent use of a one gigabite bible software program called Libronix from Logos Software whose tech support people said: "Libronix piggybacks on IE6 DLLs as a major part" of its integrated system.
Since I need the IE6 DLLs, and cannot separate IE6 from Windows XP, I cannot use WINE. Rather, I need the entire Win XP installed in the Win4Lin Pro shell. I am assuming this would permit me to use Libronix in SuSE Pro 9.2.
Does this sound correct to you guys?
Will 'installing' Win XP into Win4Lin Pro (is that terminology correct?) open my Linux system to Windows' vulnerability to viruses and other bad things? The "virtual sandbox" discussed in paragraph two would contain, in my case, only WinXP (including IE6) and the Libronix Bible software.
Since I write some biblical-thought papers, I would need a word processor available to extract and assimilate info from various Bible versions and many commentaries. OpenOffice.org would work OK but would be outside my "virtual sandbox".
I don't know enough about how "vulnerabilities" are exploited to know if my computer system would be open to attack if I would use Win4Lin Pro this way. What do you much more knowlegeable people think?
Many thanks for reading thru all this and for any help you may give. Andy
/snip/ On the Windows version of Firefox, there is a plugin that lets it imitate the MS Internet Explorer. I wonder if that plugin is available for Linux? I forget where I found the plugin. --doug -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 266.5.5 - Release Date: 3/1/2005
AndyYankovich wrote:
Since I need the IE6 DLLs, and cannot separate IE6 from Windows XP, I cannot use WINE. Rather, I need the entire Win XP installed in the Win4Lin Pro shell. I am assuming this would permit me to use Libronix in SuSE Pro 9.2.
Does this sound correct to you guys?
Yes. It should work fine. There are a few things that don't work with win4lin, mostly hardware related: it won't play midi or handle the accelerated graphics used for games or work with Windows USB drivers. I doubt if any of these would affect you. I don't know if these are still problematic with win4lin pro. Win4Lin pro needs a lot of resources, typically 512Mb ram and lots of disk space. You can probably run your program on the old win4lin with windows 98, without most of the security worries. -- JDL
On Wednesday 02 March 2005 05:09, AndyYankovich wrote:
On Feb 21 Win4Lin announced its new Pro edition, saying Windows 2000 and Win XP applications can now be used safely by Linux users without fear of Microsoft's virus prone operating system affecting Linux computers. One part of the announcement is quoted as follows:
The idea is if you use Windows stuff (IE) only for your local work (you don't define a network interface in win4lin) you're safe. What they meant was that if you use IE from under win4lin to browse the net and happen to catch spyware&malware, it won't affect your linux system, it will only affect your Windows inside win4lin.
On Wed, 2005-03-02 at 07:53 +0000, John Lamb wrote:
Win4Lin pro needs a lot of resources, typically 512Mb ram and lots of disk space. You can probably run your program on the old win4lin with windows 98, without most of the security worries. JDL
Thanks for your reply. Yes that would be true for most other Win apps but I absolutely need the IE*6* DLLs since they are an integrated part of the Libronix system. I do not understand how that works but I know I need them. Therefore, until Win4Lin Pro came out, I was unable to use the Libronix Digital Library System for my Bible papers on any operating system except Windows with IE6. Thanks again, Andy
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 AndyYankovich wrote: | Does this sound correct to you guys? | | Will 'installing' Win XP into Win4Lin Pro (is that terminology correct?) | open my Linux system to Windows' vulnerability to viruses and other bad | things? The "virtual sandbox" discussed in paragraph two would contain, | in my case, only WinXP (including IE6) and the Libronix Bible software. | | Since I write some biblical-thought papers, I would need a word | processor available to extract and assimilate info from various Bible | versions and many commentaries. OpenOffice.org would work OK but would | be outside my "virtual sandbox". | | I don't know enough about how "vulnerabilities" are exploited to know if | my computer system would be open to attack if I would use Win4Lin Pro | this way. What do you much more knowlegeable people think? | | Many thanks for reading thru all this and for any help you may give. | Andy | A few things... firstly, according to a friend of mine, Win4Lin Pro is EXTREMELY slow. He says that one might as well use Qemu, since it's faster and it's open source, if you're looking to actually run Windows. Secondly, why not just install ie6 into wine and see if the program works. I've installed ie6 into wine before, and it worked fine. Thirdly, what they say is correct. Win4Lin is basically a computer emulater. It pretends it's a PC, so that you can install Windows on it. what this means is that if any viruses do get into your Windows installation in Win4Lin, they just mess that up. Windows viruses cannot and do not work in Linux. See http://os.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1430222&tid=2&tid=78&tid=138 for more details. - -- Raoul Snyman Saturn Laboratories Web: http://www.saturnlaboratories.co.za/ E-mail: raoul.snyman@saturnlaboratories.co.za Blog: http://blog.saturnlaboratories.co.za/ Linux User #333298 (http://counter.li.org/) - -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.1 GCS/IT/MU d-(+) s(+):-(--) a- C++$ ULC(++++)>$ P+ L++(+++)>$ !E !W++@>$ N(+) !o K--? w(---)$ !O !M(+) !V !PS? !PE !Y PGP+(++)@ t+>$ 5+(++)>$ !X(-) !R tv--? b+@ DI(+) !D+ !G e++ h+() r y- - ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFCJiJEdabIu5z4rwwRAmnGAKCLO/Tt2nXyfNzsfQI79g8iwMJg5ACfYjTK RndFRMVnjkB4UvE5mab03lk= =duHm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (5)
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AndyYankovich -
Doug McGarrett -
John Lamb -
Raoul Snyman -
Silviu Marin-Caea