Is there a possibility and I’m not talking about breaking patents or anything like that, but I’m talking about a possibility technically, to have a Linux OS that can run Windows 11 apps natively?
No bottles or ports, just download an EXE file and run it.
Well that’s what Wine is, it’s native Linux software, so if you’re running something on Wine you’re (technically) running it natively on Linux, it’s a compatibility layer for Windows applications to run on Linux without breaking patents or having need to use Windows code. Of course clearly, as you know, there are shortcomings to Wine but that answers your question of where we are with this.
Yes you are right, I can live with this. But now I wonder if Microsoft would ever consider releasing a Wine competitor of their own, probably of course against a fee.
I mean, they kind of did. It’s called Windows Subsystem for Linux, and it can run Linux programs on Windows, for anyone willing to coax it into working.
It’s not awful, but it cannot even do graphical programs yet. Wine is a decade or two ahead of it.
Edit: I would have bet it was proprietary, but it is MIT License. https://github.com/microsoft/WSL
They also did the opposite, they have their own “thing” to run Windows software on Linux. It’s a quite thin “kernel-like” layer offering most of the important Windows kernel calls on Linux. This is what they used to port their
DB2Sql Server database to Linux. Sql Server on Linux uses a few calls directly on the Linux kernel for performance (File IO for the DB), but other stuff lives in a Windows emulator (Like DLLs it loads).Read a white paper about it a few years ago.
If they wanted, they could easily port all their applications to Linux, but (understandibly) they don’t want to for end user stuff.
Edit: It was SQL Server of course, DB2 is IBM: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/how-an-old-drawbridge-helped-microsoft-bring-sql-server-to-linux/
I had not heard of that. Fascinating! Thanks!
I edited the post you replied to and added a link to an article
Yes this is indeed a great step into the right direction. it seems that when I look at all the comments Wine is is indeed the best the option.
I suppose they could, but it would almost definitely be proprietary software and almost definitely include all the anti-features you see in Windows 11 which would defeat the point. If they released it as free software (FOSS) that would be an unqualified win but that’s very unlikely.
Yeah seems unlikely