How to Run Your Favorite Windows Application in Linux

Everyone has that one killer app they love. For some it's an awesome 3d first person shooter, for others it's a business application. Whatever the case, you may have been interested in trying Linux but you aren't willing to part with your application.

Well you have a few options which we shall consider. The first of which is the Linux replacement. Each Linux distro comes with a huge repository of software. Red Hat has Yum, Ubuntu has apt , and Mandriva (my fave) has easyurpmi. These repositories provide you with a massive collection of FREE software. I won't go into detail about setting up your repository or installing software here because that is covered here in a future article on why I love Mandrake so much.

Wine is not an emulator but it is really awesome.

But what if you don't want to learn a new program. I can sympathize with you, you like familiarity. You expect your icons to look a certain way and your program to behave a certain way. Well that is where Wine comes in to play. Imagine sitting down in front of Linux and putting in your favorite program CD. A new window opens up and you click on setup. You fill in your details and hit next, soon you have a familiar icon on your desktop. You double click and your program starts up in all it's glory.

OK this is oversimplified but for many windows programs it is a reality. If you want to see how your favorite app works under wine go to wine.org and you can search the app database. Off the top of my head I know that Microsoft Office 2000, Foxit reader, Mozilla Firefox 3, Macromedia FlashMX run unmodified for me. I had to edit a single registry entry to get Google Sketchup 6 working and Internet Explorer 6 requires a special download called wine-doors. Wine-doors has a lot of specially modified scripts to install some of the trickier and more popular windows programs. Some notable entries are the mono project (which let's you run .NET programs), all the core windows fonts, and a long list of windows games.

At winehq.org if your application is ranked gold or higher it may run "out of the box" with little or no changes. Apps rated silver or bronze may not work or require some modifications to run. I use a couple of windows apps on Linux and wine does fulfill the need nicely. It's free and it may be an easy way to get your application running without the hassle of setting up a virtual machine.

There is also the Crossover plugin and the Cedega project. They are both proprietary projects that have pay programs but they do offer more support for games (Cedega) or Office type programs (Crossover). They are also heavy contributors to the wine project.

Wine isn't an emulator but virtual box is!

An emulator creates an entire PC inside your computer. The advantage to this is you can have a standard windows desktop inside your Linux box and you can do almost everything you can do with a windows computer. With a few clicks you will have a windows desktop that you can install your software, browse the Internet, and do just about everything you would normally do. The disadvantages to an emulator are that you are creating a whole other PC inside yours; they have to share ram, processor, and all your peripherals. Hardware devices may not be shared well. Usb devices can suffer the most. And your graphics card will not be up to killer gaming. Still it is a windows desktop and the majority of you windows apps will run.

Their are several different emulators and they have different features. The biggest is Vwmare , it has been around a long time and the desktop version does include support for directx 8. This means you can use software that is directx 8 capable with hardware acceleration it also supports the most hardware, and it also costs the most. They do have a free program called the vmware player and it does support all the features of it's pay cousin but you either have to get someone to create you a virtual machine or go through some fancy steps to make one. They are almost always beta testing their software so you can try it out before forking over some cash.

There is a free alternative, Virtual Box is an open source virtual machine that was bought by Sun Microsystems. You can download and use it for no cost. It runs on a wide variety of systems (including Windows) and will run a huge collection of operating systems. Instructions on how to install and set it up on your OS of choice are located on their website. Once installed and setup you have a windows desktop that you can use at your discretion.

In this article I have briefly touched on ways to get windows programs running under Linux. If you need further help you can always find help at the pertinent website for your O/S, wine, or vm choice. I didn't cover all the options as there are way more choices out there in the vmfield some free some not. But you should have enough to "play" with for now.

All trademarks are copyright and owned by their perspective owners. I do not warranty this advice for any particular use and always back up your data before doing anything that might be dangerous to your system.