Win4Lin provides Winsock support used by Internet applications such as FTP, Internet Explorer and most POP3 and IMAP mail clients. Windows dial-up networking and other networking support is not supported by Win4Lin so file and printer sharing via Windows is not supported.

On the other hand, Linux networking support is accessible by Windows through the Win4Lin support. This means that a dial-up connection must first be made via Linux before using a Windows Internet application over a modem line. Likewise, accessing a file share on a Windows NT server can be done using Linux and Samba. We had already setup Samba access to Windows servers when Linux started, so it was a simple matter of using the Win4Lin configuration program to map the matching Linux directories to Windows drive letters. The results were the same but the mechanics are slightly different than using the Windows Network Neighborhood.

The main limitation was the inability to browse the Windows network and immediately map a drive from within Windows. Windows applications that setup their shares or network drives will not work under Win4Lin. Luckily we did not encounter any of these applications.

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