Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Removing the Weave

Do you feel like your woven into the Windows world without a choice? Does being a servant of the monopoly no longer please you? Fear not operating system user dying to be free! The marginalization of the Windows Empire continues at a record pace. Now if you need to run Windows applications on Linux or Mac OS X you don't even need a copy of the OS! Codeweavers CrossOver product might just be all that's required!

In a nutshell, you have three main choices:

  • Dual-booting: running two separate operating systems on one PC, and switching between them as needed by rebooting. Applications such as Apple's Bootcamp allow this to occur on a Mac OS X machine, for example.
  • Running a virtual machine: Emulation products such as VMware and Parallels allow you to run a full version of the Windows OS inside a program running on your native operating system. The Windows applications essentially run in a separate "box within a box."
  • Running Wine or CrossOver: Unlike emulation, Wine is a re-implementation of the Win32 API, allowing applications to run as if natively on the target OS. CrossOver is a commercialized version of Wine. More info and access to a 30 day trail via the link below.

CrossOver

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the mention of CrossOver--we appreciate it!

Very Best Wishes,

-jon parshall-
COO
www.codeweavers.com

Aladdin 4D said...

Glad to help.