[The Godfather]

It is public fact that Virtual PC used to run a lot faster in OS9. It is also known that Mac-On-Linux has only a little performance hit.

Has anyone tried running Virtual PC under OS9 under Mac-On-Linux? Is it faster than running VPC for OSX?

(And in no way I am trying to play games in it. I just need the Explorer Windows opening faster).

Note: my iBook can't boot OS9.

[yukon]

I haven't run Linux on my mac since Mandrake was ported. Around the last time I used VPC actually. You'd be testing out MOL, I was told that VPC takes advantage of odd parts of the host operating system (or that was their excuse for crashes in the carbon version), but it should run. It's possible that it would run faster, as VPC ran a lot better for me on OS9, and linux wouldn't have the overhead OS X does (just don't run GNOME/KDE at the same time). Worth a shot if you really need it, make a Linux partition and have at it.

To be honest, I'd just advise you to first try and rid yourself of programs that need Windows. If you can't do that, just go out and buy yourself a Pentium 100mhz, it was faster than my G4 with VPC in everything except disk access and memory (the G4 being modern and all). You can get PIII's for free now (I got two this week, bleh), just get a PC friend to set it up for you nicely so you don't have to learn it all. And I don't look down on anyone who goes this route, I'm running SpinRite on my AthlonXP so I can refurbish a failing 80gb to replace the 20gb G4 one that was passed down, the 133mhz overclocked P100 is in the closet (****ing compaq...I should rewire their powerlines, see how they like it).

[The Godfather]

I think I will go the PC route

[yukon]

Good choice ;-). I needed to learn it myself, fixed 486 and Pentium class machines until I knew it pretty well. You'll probably want to start higher than I did, why bother with DOS 5 and Win 3.11, and IRQ conflicts etc. Cheap PCs abound, but get someone knowledgable in PCs, I knew quite a lot back then and still got screwed a bit on the motherboard and videocard retail. The best option is to go to a local store, and get a standard box. Go for something that isn't bargain basement like a celeron/duron/sempron, go with the cheap versions of the better CPU. I'd wholeheartedly suggest AMD as it's cheaper, faster for all other than multimedia authoring (you can ignore old timey comments about heat production). Standard case, the 6600GT is coming out, 512mb, A64 is still expensive but has gone way down in entry prices, decent quiet heatsink, buy quality fans, use an old harddrive/CDROM/floppy/keyboardmouse/case if you have access to the parts, a PC friend should have a stack of old things to unload on you. the monitor, that's more difficult, personal, do what you can.

Here's some help, it'll be good for who ever is setting you up. VNC can help you, UltraVNC caused problems for me because it was a windows "device" but it's faster. Go with the WinNT line, 9x was horrible, Win2k is nice enough, XP is garish and a bit slower, 2k3 is best in my experiance. Use "spybot search and destroy" since it's free (and better than AdAware IMO, use Teatimer from S&D), use Firefox (avoid IE, use only for WindowsUpdate, avoid unnecessary patches as they can cause problems), have a firewall (Sygate is good, zonealarm/mcafee cause problems often, TPF has reccommendations, the Windows one won't cut it), and you need a virusscanner, I prefer McAfee's (v.6, v.7 are good, higher up and it gets odd), there's also a couple free ones out there that are quality, and I was recently recommended Kaspersky's, avoid Norton. Search google for "blackviper" and use his help to trim services, if you don't then use the utilities on grc.com to close messanger and dcom.

[Turnpike]

Originally posted by yukon:
You can get PIII's for free now (I got two this week, bleh)

I see this said every so often. Where, exactly, does one get a PIII for free? Does one have to, say, live next to a large university that is dumping old tech? Is there some trick?

I'd love to have an old p3 sitting around here to play with... load up linux, apache, php, et cetera... use it to test web sites at the very least. More, if I could get a decent enough machine.