While some of us in the Linux community have sworn off the use of Microsoft Windows applications, the reality is there are a number of Win32 applications that don’t yet have stellar Linux equivalents. And even when there is a strong Linux option — with word processing for example — trying to work with Windows’ varied and evolving data formats can be a bit of a headache.
The Woes of Emulation and API Mapping
Traditionally, most non-Windows operating systems have tried to achieve Windows compatibility through emulation. Unix variants and Linux have had Windows emulators such as Wabi and Wine available for some time now. But these emulators offer only limited 16-bit application compatibility. Furthermore, any well-founded effort to reverse-engineer the Win32 Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to function under an environment like Wabi would be like chasing a moving target, as Microsoft frequently adds new API’s and offers almost no documentation as to how they work internally. An effort to map and reverse engineer the Windows API function calls has already been tried on OS/2, with its Presentation Manager windowing system. Its founders eventually abandoned the project in despair.
Emulation and API mapping are not the only ways…
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