Wine, Crossover Office, and Cedega
WATER OR WINE?
If you need to make a Windows application run on Linux, there is no better way than Wine. We investigated the free and commercial Wine variants to see how they bear up under real-life conditions.
In 1993, Sun Microsystems developed a small tool designed to let users run Windows applications in Solaris out of the box – that is, without needing to port the applications first. Just a few months later, the first attempt was made to make the tool run on BSD and Linux, and this step marks the birth of what has now become known as the Wine project. The name Wine, an acronym in typical GNU tradition, stands for “Wine is not an Emulator.” And Wine [1] really isn’t an emulator in the traditional sense. The tool neither emulates a different kind of CPU, nor, strictly speaking, an operating system. Instead Wine inserts itself as a translation layer between Linux and the Windows application the user wants to run. It intercepts any Windows API calls made by the application and attempts to convert them to equivalent Unix and X11 calls. From a technical point of view, Wine is a loader, which loads and
launches Windows programs, and a suite of libraries that translate or emulate Windows API calls.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
News
-
LPI Launches FOSSlife Website
Linux Professional Institute launches FOSSlife, a website for the FOSS community.
-
Tuxedo Computers Joins the Ryzen Bandwagon
Tuxedo Computers has released the Tuxedo Boot BA15 with an AMD Ryzen 3500 CPU.
-
Linux Apps on Windows Is Coming
Linux GUI apps will be coming to Windows Subsystem for Linux.
-
Linux Usage Is on the Rise
According to NetMarketShare, Linux saw a significant bump in usage during April.
-
Lenovo is Jumping on the Linux Laptop Bandwagon
PC and laptop maker Lenovo is set to release ThinkPad laptops pre-installed with Fedora Linux.
-
A New Linux Laptop Is in the Making
Manjaro Linux and TUXEDO computers have joined forces to develop the InfinityBook Manjaro.
-
Ubuntu 20.04 Has Been Released
The latest iteration of the user-friendly Linux distribution is now available.
-
Nextcloud Partners with IONOS
Nextcloud has partnered with Germany’s largest cloud provider, IONOS, to provide a safe haven for your data within the cloud.
-
Linux to Get High Resolution Wheel Scrolling
Work on high resolution wheel scrolling for the Linux desktop is being completed.
-
KDE Developers Are Working on a TV Interface
The developers of the KDE desktop are hard at work to create a TV interface.