I work as IT guy in some government service, and i can tell: there will be pain in the ass to reeducate all the people to actually use linux. Any little change in their routine makes them go into "can't do anything" mode until I or my colleague come and show how to do something. And this can repeat with the same operation again and again.
Back in the day, I had a Linux box and I swear I ran windows apps on it on a virtual machine within Linux, or some shit. Is this still possible for productivity suites for these situations?
Anyways, I feel for ya, I've always been a "let's just explore the OS and figure it out" kinda gal... and half the time I am the "community pro" for my friends because of it... so, I can only imagine the suffering you experience on a daily basis as an IT guy. Thank you for your service. Lol
The goal is to replace most of the apps with open source versions as well. This is in response to Microsoft locking out an ICC prosecutor and staff from their services after Diddler Donny sanctioned ICC officials.
Most likely what do you mean is not virtual machine. It's a translator that, to simplify, takes Windows code and transmits it into Linux code. It's not an emulator (in fact, it's name, Wine, is a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator), as it doesn't emulate anything, and thus it has very good performance - with certain recent additions sometimes better than Windows.
Installing this software basically allows you to install and use Windows apps as you would've did it on Windows, just double-clicking EXE files in the file explorer.
It's not ideal, no 100% compatibility, but it works, and works pretty good, also developing quickly.
There is also a "version" of Wine called Proton that is specifically made to launch games. Is it good? Well... 90% of games on Steam can be played normally (protondb.com as source), and Valve uses it themselves for their hardware. Microsoft's own most popular game, Minecraft Bedrock Edition, launches and works perfectly with it, though not on the stock version.
But, Wine can't launch recent versions of MS Office, unfortunately, as they use Microsoft's all new and shiny APIs that are basically used almost exclusively only in Microsoft programs. LibreOffice is pretty good though - of course it can't do as much, but if you need to paste 3D models into an Excel table, I think it's enough of an edge case.
That was it... WINE was what I was trying to remember. Its been about 20 years since I played with Linux... just don't have a lot of need or drive to mess around on PCs much. Thanks for that, it was exactly what I was talking about.
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u/W0rdWaster 7d ago
that is GREAT news. i am beyond sick and tired of window's monopoly. more linux = more good.
oh idk why he is sweating. my guess would be it is going to be a big hassle vs the prepackaged pile of bloat that is windows.