Ask Slashdot: Could Linux Ever Become Fully Compatible With Windows and Mac Software?

dryriver writes: Linux has been around for a long time now. A lot of work has gone into it; it has evolved nicely and it dominates in the server space. Computer literate people with some tech skills also like to use it as their desktop OS. It's free and open source. It's not vendor-locked, full of crapware or tied to any walled garden. It's fast and efficient. But most "everyday computer users" or "casual computer buyers" still feel they have to choose either a Windows PC or an Apple device as the platform they will do their computing on. This binary choice exists largely because of very specific commercial list of programs and games available for these OSs that is not available for Linux.

Here is the question: Could Linux ever be made to become fully compatible with all Windows and Mac software? What I mean is a Linux distro that lets you successfully install/run/play just about anything significant that says "for Windows 10" or "for OSX" under Linux, without any sort of configuring or crazy emulation orgies being needed? Macs and PCs run on the exact same Intel/AMD/Nvidia hardware as Linux. Same mobos, same CPUs and GPUs, same RAM and storage devices. Could Linux ever be made to behave sufficiently like those two OSs so that a computer buyer could "go Linux" without any negative consequences like not being able to run essential Windows/Mac software at all? Or is Linux being able to behave like Windows and OSX simply not technically doable because Windows and OSX are just too damn complex to mimic successfully?

Comments

WINE

[transformania]

If this is what you want, I encourage you to become one with the community behind WINE. And, chances are they have already put a lot of effort into making, the few Windows apps worth your time, work (cough..Photoshop...cough...games...)

Re: Yes and No

[bondsbw]

Also it depends on what you call "Windows software". You won't have great success with consumer software on the GUI stack, but server software is a different story nowadays. Command line is much better and Microsoft has taken big steps to making Windows Server headless. PowerShell and .NET Core now run on Linux. And ASP.NET Core is cross-platform for hosting web applications.

Re: Yes and No

[OrangeTide]

There is Linux syscall emulation on NT kernel and on L4 kernel already. And I used the Linux-compatibility in LynxOS back in the day for an RTOS project.

FreeBSD/NetBSD carried a lot over from the older iBCS (Intel Binary Compatibility Standard) to provide Linux compatibility. NetBSD is interesting in that it still supports really old 386BSD binaries.

Windows compatible is harder than Linux compatible. You can start from wine, Longene or ReactOS, but really unless you have the resources of Microsoft and their level of internal documentation it's not going to go well for you. But feel free to run your Linux binaries on Windows 10, it does work as advertised.