Running x86 Programs on the Rasp Pi
Out of This World
© Lead Image © innovari, fotolia.com
Some of your favorite programs might not run on Raspberry Pi because no version is available for the ARM architecture. ExaGear Desktop changes that by acting as a translator between the ARM and x86 worlds.
The open source advantage was evident from the beginning with the Raspberry Pi: Since free software usually runs on many different platforms, almost all Debian packages could be ported to the new system in a very short time. In addition, there was software that exploited the Rasp Pi's special hardware features.
But for proprietary programs, including most Windows applications, the path to the Raspberry Pi is much less assured. Unless the developers want to port their code to the Rasp Pi, users are out in the cold – unless they know about ExaGear.
ExaGear is a tool that provides a special translation layer that converts x86 commands to ARM equivalents. You can use ExaGear to run software written for x86 systems on the ARM-based Raspberry Pi. Support for the Wine integration layer means you can even run old Windows programs directly on the Rasp Pi.
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