Does anyone have any experience running the Shorter Oxford Dictionary DVD in Linux?

http://www.amazon.com/Shorter-Oxford...dp/0199231761/

TIA

Supported operating systems: Windows: Intel® Pentium® III 1GHz or faster processor (or equivalent); 512MB of RAM; Microsoft® Windows® Vista, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, or Widows 2000. Macintosh: PowerPC® G3 500MHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM or Intel Core Duo 1.83 GHz or faster processor, 512MB of RAM; Mac OS x 10.3.9 or later (Power PC) or MacOS x 10.4 x or 10.5 x (Intel). All platforms: 300MB free hard disk space; monitor with 1024x768 pixels and high colour (16 bits per pixel, i.e. 65,536 colours); CD-ROM drive; 16-bit sound card.

Looks quite insane to suppose W.I.N.E. could (but you never know.)
VirtualBox is more like it, IMO.

No Experience, sorry.

A good dikshunary is handy to have and eye shure need won. And yeah, WINE scares me. No experience with VirtualBox. Suggestions solicited!

I don't have a solution (though I do have a compact OED print edition), but I have to say this is one of the funniest lines I've seen in a long time.

All seriousness aside, VirtualBox is pretty easy. There is a learning curve, but it's well worth it. And, if you make a mistake, you can simply delete the VM file and start over.

As for WINE, I suspect that it is not a solution in this case. I have another database type reference that works with Mac and Windows and it flat-out does not work with WINE. It pretends to install, but it doesn't.

I see I'll need to deal with chroot. The first time I heard about that gizmo, I thought it was a cigar....

Wikipedia: I believe I'd be well advised to master chroot and VB before buying the DVD. Still: I won't know for sure whether I can ever make the DVD work until I get my hands on it, now will I?

if I can't make it work, which could happen -- I'm out about $60. Even if it works, every time I want to look up a word, I'll have to set up this chroot VB thingie. How convenient is that?? Cripes. This is a tar baby.

Those two bound volumes of the Short OED look far more rational. Better to have a reference that can be used quickly and easily, even though it costs twice as much as the DVD.

I do not believe in digital can openers.

Easy Virtualbox recipe...
Download and install Virtualbox. Download (for now) the guest additions also.
Make sure the build numbers match on each component.
VirtualBox-4.2.12-84980-Linux_x86.run will NOT accept a guest addition of say, Oracle_VM_VirtualBox_Extension_Pack-4.2.12-ou812ic.vbox-extpack
Either from repo or here.
Install Windows XP or any other qualifying Windows Operating System Product. Then you can share your physical CDRom on the host OS to be available in the guest OS to read your "dikshunary". The down-side is the your host OS CDRom Drive will have to have the media in the drive should\when you expect to need it.

Edit: "chroot"?
who ordered chroot?
There's no chroot on the Menu!

There's nothing to chroot anything with Virtualbox, Pop in the disk, fire up the instance and enjoy.

I'm not sure where you get the idea you need to chroot to use VirtualBox? VB runs as a normal desktop application and allows you to install Windows in the virtual machine -- no chroot necessary. What you do need though is a copy of Windows to install.

Where did I get the idea that chroot is required for Virtual Box? From the source that was at the top of Google search results, and maybe with the help of some (precedented) confusion on my part. I know nothing about virtual boxes or root jails, so I could have misunderstood the information I found. https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads See the last sentence in the Note near the top of the post.

Chroot or no chroot, the bound volumes are by far the simplest and easiest way to meet my needs.

Too, if I buy the books, I won't be taking a chance, hoping that the software will work with the Oxford DVD.

Thanks to all who responded to my query.

Ah, I see. Don't worry about that it's just if you want to do something odd like install 32 bit VirtualBox on a machine running a 64 bit kernel -- not something you would ordinarily do.

Also, chroot is used by hosting providers or IT types when they set up virtual private servers for customers or users.

You don't need it experiment with VB on your personal system.