Windows Applications and Ubuntu

Windows Applications and Linux

I’ts been a few days since i installed Ubuntu and all I can say is that I love it!!
My knowledge base of the commands is growing fast and I’m beginning to understand how and why things are different on Linux..

There is one little problem however, like most people, when i first came into contact with a pc, it had Windows on it and i wasn’t given a choice. So it’s been Windows for the more than 10 years. And because of this, I’ve gotten quite comfortable with it and the applications that come with it. Windows Media Player, Microsoft Office, every game that’s worth mentioning, Nero, and all the other software that only runs on Windows.

See I have nothing against these and other Windows applications, in fact, I like most of them. The software vendors are wise in creating apps for Windows, because that is just what everybody whose not on a Unix variant uses– and that’s more than 80% of the world’s population(these are my stats, so don’t take me to court or anything).If I were to make software and I needed people to use it (and hopefully make me some money) i’d definitely go Windows first, not because I particularly like the platform, but because that’s where the largest user base is….that’s just a hard fact, like it or not.

Ok that said, I’m moving to Ubuntu for reasons that I’ll write about in full in another blog post (actually, I find that I have a new reason each day, so that article might be a long time in coming). As much as I like Linux, I still want the apps that I’m used to. For apps like Opera, vlc, java and a few others, i don’t have a problem because there are Linux versions of these.

I’ve read many articles written by people with similar views. People may be willing to make the move, but they need to take their apps with them. And because this is very difficult to do, people just give up and continue using Windows.

Some websites suggest using Virtual Machines and Emulators, others say WINE is the best thing to happen since running water…I’m inclined to go down the Wine route, but unfortunately it’s a little more difficult to configure than VM, but i’m not known to be afraid of tough stuff, so i’ll give it a shot and see how that goes.

Now… the biggest challenge is that I don’t have an internet connection at home, so I can’t just sudo apt-get it or use the Software Center…. i’ll try downloading the .deb packages and resolve the dependencies the hard way (you have to get your hands dirty sooner or later)