Monday, March 6th, 2006, 6:50 pm
Windows-Linux Emulation and Transition
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INE is one among various projects that enable Windows programs to run on Linux and other UNIX derivatives. While Wine is probably the most mature and best known ‘emulator’ (WINE truly stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator since it uses an abstraction layer cunningly), there is also the commercial tool called Win4Lin, which snatched a few headlines recently.
The Wine team has just released another version of their software, as reported by broad media, The Inquirer included.
The people behind Wine, some clever software that tries to get Windows to run on Unix and Linux machines, have released another version.
Wine is a translation layer capable of running Windows applications on Linux and other POSIX compatible operating systems.
It seeks to get Windows programs running in Wine to behave normally, without suffering the performance problems of an emulator.
On top of it all, IBM have recently become obliged to OpenDocument, which eliminates Microsoft Office dependencies. No wonder IBM are perceived as the most daunting rival to Microsoft. IBM further ease the transition from Windows to Linux (and Java), either by using portability through IDE packages for Linux (Mono) or by teaming up with other companies. This makes any transition and penetration to Linux as smooth as necessary, even without prior familiarity with Linux. Windows becomes a a transparent layer, much like a man on laxatives and milk!
Related item: Free Emulators
