Virtualizing WindowsXP on Linux Fedora 12 for Photoshop

Question

I am running a Linux server from 2000, I have Fedora12 installed as the OS. I know you can virtualize Windows XP on the system to be able to run Windows programs, but the problem is I My server has only one 1333Mhz Pentium 3 processor and 1G of Ram. granted this is a pretty kick ass computer for the day, but lacking the second processor I'm afraid that I will not be able to run Windows virtualization to support Photoshop CS3. Is there any program out there that runs similar to Photoshop, like windows Digital Image suite 10, that will run smoothly in my Linux Fedora 12 environment? or can I virtualize windows and run the Windows digital image suite 10, without slowing or corrupting my system?

Answer 1

Running Windows XP natively with 512Mb of RAM is painful enough, I doubt you'd be very happy with its performance running virtualized. If using that machine is your only option, there are a couple alternatives you might try.

1. Use GIMP instead. Unless you're an Uber photoshopper, it's likely to have all the features you need: http://www.gimp.org
2. You can try to get CS3 running under Wine. CS3, in particular, has some issues but the workarounds listed at http://wiki.winehq.org/AdobePhotoshop suggest it may be possible to get it running.

GIMP is probably your best bet given your system constraints.