Run Windows Applications in Linux

With wine and Crossover Linux, now you can run many popular windows applications in Linux operating system. I have already installed and using Microsoft Office 2003, Adobe Photoshop 7, Internet Explorer, Picasa 3 on my Ubuntu Hardy. They are working almost without a glitch.

Screenshot: Microsoft Office 2003 running on ubuntu 8.04 (installed through crossover)

Wine (Windows Emulator) is a compatibility layer on top of Linux, that runs windows programs. It independently implements the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL and Unix, and it is free and open-source.

Picasa is officially supported in wine

Office 2003 is being installed through Crossover

Crossover is a product from CodeWeavers which you can optionally use. It is based on wine. It makes installation and execution of Windows programs simple and fast. It integrates windows applications seamlessly with your Gnome or KDE environment. I am able to run Adobe Photoshop 7, Office XP, Office 2003, IE6, Windows Media Player 6.4 without any problem. Though it is also supposed to run Office 2007, I could not install it for some unknown reasons.

Screenshot: Adobe Photoshop 7 installed through Crossover

Screenshot: Internet Explorer 6 and Excel 2003 (also installed through Crossover)

Besides these softwares, most of the popular Windows games run through wine. Check out the wine application database to see which softwares and games are supported in wine.

One thing that is lacking from wine is you cannot install Windows drivers for any device. Your device has to be already working on linux. Thats what kept me from completely switching to Linux. For example, I could not make my TV tuner card work in Linux.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Power On Your Computer by Keyboard, Mouse or Alarm

Image
I found these useful options in the bios settings of my computer. In the Power Management Setup you can enable the Power on by Keyboard and Power on by Mouse options. Then, when you want to power on your computer or wake it up from sleep or you can just double click your mouse or press some key(s) on your keyboard.
Read more

Comet Lulin Comes Closer

Image
Comet Lulin will be on its closest approach (.41 AU) to earth on 24th February. It will not be much bright though (Max. magnitude 4.0 - 5.0). Still on a dark sky you may be able to spot it as a white splotch against the black sky. Look for it in the constellation Leo [ skymap ]. It will lie only a few degrees from saturn. The comet actually looks green through powerful telescopes. This is because, its gassy atmosphere, of the size of Jupiter, contains cyanogen(CN) and diatomic carbon(C 2 ), both glow green in sunlight.
Read more

Into the World of Computer Gaming

Image
I had a Desktop PC with Gigabyte G31M-S2L motherboard, Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB RAM for a long time. But, it didn't have any dedicated graphics card. Most computer games wouldn't work on my PC. Recently, I bought a descent mid-range graphics card (AMD Raedon 6670 1 GB DDR5) for Rs. 5400. Now, I can play almost all the latest games in High Resolution.
Read more