ultra newbie here

[radixvir]

Can you run windows applications on a linux machine? If not, why hasn't someone built-in this compatibility to one of the variants. It seems obvious if you wanted to boost the popularity of linux this would be the way to do it.

--jason

[wreckd]

wine (winehq.com) is attempting to do this. its harder than you think.

so far very little, mostly older windows apps, runs under wine.

in the meantime, i have windows installed on vmware for whenever i need to run office or something like that.

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by radixvir:
<STRONG>Can you run windows applications on a linux machine?</STRONG>

There are several emulators and emulator-like things available. WINE (which stands for WINE Is Not an Emulator) is a popular emulator (actually, it's not an emulator -- it runs Windows binaries as native code while simulating a Windows environment and Windows system calls) that can run certain Windows programs, however I don't really know why you'd want to use it -- there are Linux alternatives to any software you could want that'll work better than some crufty WINE emulation.

VMWare is another option. It emulated an entire virtual PC, which you can install any operating system on. Any software can run in the VMWare environment, but there are limitions in the types of hardware the software can currently emulate -- don't count on getting DirectX apps to work, because VMWare can't emulate most multimedia hardware to a significant degree.

If not, why hasn't someone built-in this compatibility to one of the variants.

Have you tried it? It's "non-trivial". In the same way that interplanetary travel is non-trivial.

[radixvir]

cool thanks. i never thought such a thing would be easy, i just hadnt heard of anyone working on it.

[Nalle]

I'm not sure I agree 100% with Craig. I've been looking all over the place for a good office-control system to deal with invoices, slalaries and theese things.

That _is_ something you would need such an "emulator" for.

All the country spesific things in apps like that will not be addressed, I think until someone makes a Linux-app capable of using the same datafiles as its Windows counterpart. Or, making a cross platform version to address the problem.

There is not enough people using linux as a workstaion yet, so they won't use recources on making the app.


&lt;/nalle&gt;

[mrBen]

I think you'll find that it's things like this (http://www.robval.com/linux/desktop/index.asp) that will turn people to Linux. Add to that 2 or 3 major corporations backing Linux, and you might be surprised at the result - the pull of a $10,000 saving is probably quite strong, particularly if we are heading to recession.

[Craig McPherson]

Originally posted by Nalle:
<STRONG>I'm not sure I agree 100% with Craig. I've been looking all over the place for a good office-control system to deal with invoices, slalaries and theese things. That _is_ something you would need such an "emulator" for.</STRONG>

While there are certainly some situations for which there exist no real Linux solutions, I doubt that emulating a Windows program with WINE would often produce satisfactory results in those situations. WINE is good for certain things, but I can't imagine anyone using it in a professional setting. If a program is essential to your business, why would you want to run it on a foreign-OS environment emulator? You'd be best off either encouraging the development of a native application, hiring a programmer to develop a native application, buying porting rights from the company and hiring a programmer to do the porting, or simply running the application on its native OS. If you're going to rely on a Windows program, why not just run it on Windows? Running a Windows program on a UNIX OS takes away most of the advantages of running a UNIX OS to begin with, so what's the point?

[ 21 September 2001: Message edited by: Craig McPherson ]

[paulb]

Im only saying this because you said you were an 'ultra-newbie', but probably the easiest thing to do is create a partion for each. This can be done with software included in most distros, and so you can run Linux or Windows on the same computer.

[radixvir]

i just wanted to know because i like to have choices. personally i like the open source aspect of linux and how fast it evolves. i also like its stability. recently microsoft increased its licensing fees up to 107% is some cases. this would be the perfect time to switch to linux, of course i wouldnt be able to run some of my favorite (and lesser known) windows apps. (like talking caller id) its this and only this thats kept me from moving to linux. i just thought it would be really 'cool' to have compatabilty built in.
--jason

[bdg1983]

radixvir... I was wondering if having a keyboard with certain non-functioning keys causes any problems from within Linux. The times that I have had a keyboard with sticky keys or they just quit working, I just replace the entire keyboard.

Helps when they can be had for just a few $$.

Is the 'shift' key one of the first to go? Anyone know if it's possible to fix them or remap the shift key to some other key that is rarely used? Thanks