.exe file support in linux
 

Hi friends,

Linux programmers are working hard to create diversified provision in linux kernel. Now I think linux is offering diversified support in every aspect.

My question is why it is not offering support for exe files. What are technical problems and how theoretically it can be solved?

Suppose if it happens it will be the great succsess.

Every one is invited to comment about the above statement.

Thanks in advance.

Re: .exe file support in linux
 

It does:
http://www.winehq.com/site/documentation
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxoffice/

Not to mention http://www.transgaming.com/ for games

I am not just talking about some programmes which can run on linux.
My question is about executing all exe files.
How it can be possible to create provision in linux.
What are the technical problems.
Whether we have to amend linux kernel or add some modules to run exe files.

if anybody know any link (discussion about running exe files on linux) plz tell us.


thanks in advance.

If anyone knew the answers to those questions, Wine would run perfectly. As it is, Wine is far from perfect, but is getting better. I might suggest reading the Wine and Transgaming changelogs and bug reports, so that you can see where the problems lie.

furthermore...

Linux isn't windows..

it's fun if one can use binaries from the other.. but there's also a beauty in beeing separate as it comes to these binaries. I would love to see Big-Gun commercial Programs, wich are now only compiled for windows machines, beeing compiled native for linux aswell.

The programs we pointed to are all programs which allow Linux to run Windows .exe files, they are pieces of software that give Linux 'provision', if that's what you want to call it, to execute .exe files. The problem is that its not just a simple matter of executing the code in the .exe file (all of them do that) but to actually get a Windows program to run you have to provide identical equivalents to ALL the Windows API calls it uses.

If you were to take a simple, generic, "hello world" program for example, that only called the standard C libraries and no Windows libraries then it would run quite flawlessly. However any non-trivial app will in some way rely on Windows for its function.

Its a huge programming effort to reimplement all of the functions in the Windows API on a completely different platform (Linux). For each of those functions you have to find some way of using the Linux APIs to achieve the exact same thing. This is what the WINE project is doing and unfortunately its a long way from finished, but gets better every release.

This is the equivalent of trying to run a diesel car on petrol. Adding full native support for Windows executables would be a mammoth task taking thousands of hours and possibly many years.
The biggest problem that developers of Wine and other equivalent software have run into is trying to backwards engineer Windows functions. And since Windows is closed source with many undocumented areas this can be a nightmare.
The bottom line is that it simply wouldn't be worth it, there are Linux alternatives for almost any task you can perform in Windows and for the times when you really must use Windows there's the dual boot option.

There is also another reason why we would not really want to run "window exe" in linux.


SECURITY!, SECURITY!, SECURITY!!!


I don't want viruses, adware, malware,etc. That's why I left Windows in the first place.

If you want to run Window Apps, then use Wine, Transgaming and CrossOver Office.


Just an opinion...