Porting Your Application To Linux

There are five ways to run a Windows application on a Linux workstation:

1. Set up the workstation to boot either Windows or Linux. Whenever you want to run that application, boot Windows. For your daily work, boot Linux. This works perfectly, but requires a licensed copy of Windows. For security, I recommend that you use the Linux system for all Internet access.
2. Run it under Linux under wine. Wine is a package that takes real EXE programs and runs them under Linux. It can work. It also might not work. It depends on what the EXE tries to do. There's no way to know ahead of time. There are other tools like wine, but wine is the most advanced, I think.
3. Compile it with the wine library. This is much like running it under wine, except that the needed translations are build into the code. It runs better, they say, but requires the application source code to be modified to Linux standard syntax.
4. Alter the lowest-level application code to call Linux functions rather than Windows functions. This eliminates the need for wine or the wine library. But the application is still structured and designed for Windows.
5. Redesign and rebuild the application to Linux standards. This is the most expensive alternative, but depending on how old the program is, it may be time to rewrite it anyway.

What does Arakka recommend? The simplest, cheapest thing that gets the job done.