Please help if you can
Mike Jeays
Mike.Jeays at rogers.com
Sat Mar 5 07:06:10 PST 2005
On Sat, 2005-03-05 at 09:41, Chuck Swiger wrote:
> Chris wrote:
> > I would like to know if this OS platform supports your everday and ever so
> > standard .EXE applications.
>
> Yes, FreeBSD will run standalone executable code in the various .exe and .dll
> formats, although people often use Wine or a similiar emulator if they want to
> have a more complete Windows environment available while using FreeBSD.
Surely not. I have never heard it suggested before that FreeBSD will
run Windows .exe binaries directly. I would have thought that you would
have to use Wine or Crossover Office.
>
> > Basically, I am wondering if FreeBSD is compatible to all of the endless
> > softwares out there that "require" you to be using a certain version of
> > Microsoft Windows?
>
> All of the software? No.
>
> Not that most Windows software is portable enough the run on all flavors of
> Windows itself: there's plenty of old 16-bit stuff which won't work on a
> modern Win32 platform (WinXP, 2003, etc), just as there is a huge amount of
> stuff written today which won't run on Windows 3.1.
>
> That being said, FreeBSD doesn't come with the Windows DLL's that many
> programs use. But they and other resources like TrueType fonts can be used if
> you migrate them, and if you check the ports collection you you find ways of
> using Flash and RealPlayer and video codec stuff like that if you really want
> to. Stability may suffer somewhat compared with purely native FreeBSD apps,
> but if people want to view websites in Flash (or be advertised to, more
> accurately), they can.
>
> See http://www.freebsd.org/ports/
>
> > I'm not a computer genius (though for some reason many label me as that)
> > but I know my way around the Windows platform quite well. I am not an
> > advanced programmer in any sort, but I do try and have several different
> > types of programming software.
>
> Don't worry about it-- I promise that we won't call you a computer genius if
> you don't want us to. I make no comment on what might happen in the converse
> situation, but I suggest verifying your sense of humor beforehand.
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