My screen (notice anything strange?)

[djr33]

I thought I'd share the results of what I've done today. Look closely. You might notice something.


I've been tempted to do something like this for years (and tried once in a while, without success). Finally, it works. It's a little slow (and my computer's fan is running kinda fast, if that's any indication), but it's about as good as I would expect. And fun.


If you're wondering how I did it, it took a few steps and many hours of installation (the guide claimed about 2 hours; It's been about 6). More or less I ended up following the information here:
http://www.davidbaumgold.com/tutorials/wine-mac/
But for convenience I'm also using:
http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/
Both of those I found after a while of searching through various links.


For the record, this is fairly advanced and confusing. So do it at your own risk, probably back up your files before trying it, and plan to have most of a day available. Additionally, as far as I know, unlike previous methods, this is completely legal. It's all open source and just essentially (as the program says) "bottles" Windows programs so they can run on OSX. Any .exe, though I haven't tried too much.


As a web designer, it's nice to know that if needed I can finally test using IE on here (and as many versions as I'd like, apparently.) The real reason I did this is that it allows me to install various freeware programs that only exist for Windows. I use them rarely, but when I do it's useful.

[traq]

I tried wine (for linux) once, but it wasn't very stable and didn't run the program I actually wanted to use. Once I get a more powerful desktop, I'm planning to run VMs when I need windows; in the meantime, I have my laptop.

[djr33]

I haven't tested for stability or over a range of programs yet. But it works for the basics. Generally speaking I don't want to use Windows programs, just a few, and usually relatively lightweight ones. For example, IE for checking compatibility or small freeware programs to convert file types, etc.