Wine

I've mentioned a couple of times that I use Wine to run applications on Windows on my Ubuntu Linux laptop. So it's high time I give it the praise it deserves: Wine, I love you! Well, in a platonic way anyway. I'm really impressed with what this application does and how well it achieves it. Sure, I've tried a whole number of Windows applications that it doesn't handle but it doesn't matter. For me it's more like for each program that actually run it's a bonus, a happy surprise. Today I tried one of my favorite games Happyland Adventures and it ran perfectly, although I had my screen set on such a high resolution that window of the game was a mere dot in the middle of my screen as it runs in what I believe to be 640x480.

Earlier today (well, technically yesterday) I also managed to find AppDB, a database which records how various Windows programs work under Wine. The interface is a little cluttered but apart from that this is an extremely helpful thing. Just go there, look up your favorite Windows program and see how it works for others. Even if it doesn't work right out of the box some people might have found out a little trick to make it work. Pure awesomeness.

For me Wine makes life on the Linux side quite a bit brighter.