Hi Eric, On 5 Oct 2012, at 23:42, Eric Blake <ebl...@redhat.com> wrote: > On 10/05/2012 10:03 AM, Gary V. Vaughan wrote: >> Is there a legal way to get access >> to Windows and the various flavours of gcc and MSVC that libtool users >> care about, without spending hundreds of dollars on software I would >> never use for anything else? It pretty much sucks that everytime I >> push a well tested (on various Unix varieties) patch, that Windows likes >> to blow up gratuitously. I don't mind wasting a bit of time checking >> things on Windows, but I really don't want to also waste money on >> Microsoft. > > If you are a fan of virtual machines, it is possible to set up qemu-kvm > under Linux to run a default-60-trial of various Windows versions > without having to pay for a license. Microsoft also has a documented > means of expanding that 60 days into 180 days, which means you can test > Microsoft products at no monetary cost at the expense of reinstalling > your virtual machine twice per year.
Thanks for the tip. That's no different to a working Windows install anyway... when I worked for a company that forced me to use Windows 95 to connect to their exchange server, it needed to be reinstalled at least once a year even though all it did was run Out Look all day! I actually run a lot of virtual machines on my Mac, including a couple of versions of Mac OS and Linux, and I certainly wouldn't want to squander perfectly good hardware on an OS that I don't use, and wasn't aware of the 180 days trials, so I'll take a look into that next time I have half a day spare. Do they also have similar trials for MSVC? Any idea what the least painful version of Windows for a VM is these days (I'm guessing XP is still the best)? Cheers, -- Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)
