by Bob Lloyd

Created on: January 10, 2010

Many people contemplate moving away from Microsoft Windows to another operating system but want to preserve their investment in the Windows software they already have.  But Ubuntu, a version of Linux, provides excellent facilities for running Windows software.

Windows programs typically make use of the the Windows operating system to do lower level functions such as screen and file handling and other operating systems will do these differently using different code.  Windows programs make use of the libraries of code installed with the operating system, so to have these programs running on another operating system means that there must be a way of substituting for those libraries, translating them into calls to native Ubuntu code.

Ubuntu makes it easy to run many Windows programs by providing a program called Wine which intercepts any calls that would have used the Windows libraries, and instead redirects them to the appropriate code on Ubuntu.  And it does a remarkable job making it possible to run even complex and resource-hungry applications like Photoshop and Dreamweaver.  Every call to the Windows operating system is translated into the appropriate Linux library call, and the software works just as if it was running on Windows.  In fact, because Ubuntu is so much leaner, some applications actually run faster on Ubuntu than on Vista.

Wine is installed by using the Synaptic Package Manager, entering Wine in the search, and selecting for it to be installed.  It downloads and installs automatically with absolutely minimal user involvement.  Installing and running Windows native applications needs no command line work.  Ubuntu will detect that you are trying to run a Windows .exe file and will launch Wine to deal with it.  Installing any applications on Ubuntu is easily accomplished using the Package Manager.  It's just a question of selecting from the thousands of packages available and clicking Apply.  (Having said that, you will need to use the terminal to run MSI files with Wine.  In the folder containing the MSI file, simply type "wine start applicationname.msi" where applicationname.msi is the name of the MSI file.)

For the last ten years, Microsoft and others have been developing and releasing code using a new framework called .NET and there are now very many applications using these libraries.  Different versions of .NET were available for the various versions of Windows and the intention

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