I have an older PC with Windows Vista and I've been hesitating to upgrade to Windows 7. My PC doesn't have the hardware for the Virtual Machine to run XP for older software. I have a lot of old software that I still use. Can I set up Linux without a Virtual Machine and use it to run older Windows software?

Roz

^ i would assume that windows would do a better job of running windows software.

in the least i would try a live-usb and install wine and try to run your windows programs in wine.

The answer is a definite maybe. There are a variety of products, all based on WINE (http://www.winehq.org/), that provide some level of functionality for Windows software. Each application has its own level of success running on Linux using WINE or one of its derivatives.

Either that or compile a list of software and se if linux has something like it.

You might want to check out http://appdb.winehq.org/ - for any mass market commercial software there should be an entry that lets you know how well it runs in wine. I would also second EDDY1's suggestion that a lot of software you have in windows, you might be able to find a good open source alternative for. If you're worried about being able to open old files, it's worth noting often open source programs have better support for legacy file formats than newer closed source programs.

If you have custom programs you need to run, you'll just have to try them out in wine, but there's good odds you can make them work.