Windows on a Mac

[Archer 007]

How diffucult is it to set up a Mac to run Windows programmes? Is it even possible?

[FireBall]

I heard of a program that did this once, but it required the Mac OS X Install disc, as most emulators (legal ones, at least), do... Also, it was really slow... IT slowed down the CPU by anywhere from 25% to 50%. I'll tell you if I remember it, if you're still interested.

[MarineCorps]

It is possible but you need a PC emulator. This computer tech guy I followed around told me that.

[Archer 007]

So, basically you can, but it will be really sucky?

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Virtual PC is pretty much your best option. However, you would still need a very fast Mac to get anything to run at a decent speed, and it still has not been upgraded to work with the new G5's.

There's also Darwine, anyone familiar with Wine for Linux would know that this is not an emulator, just a way of running windows applications on a non-windows system. The Mac port is not yet complete, however.

So, basically you can, but it will be really sucky?

It wouldn't be too sucky if you have a good computer, and the apps that you're trying to run aren't high-end games or very processor intensive.

[Archer 007]

Well, I was looking at using such a program on laptop, so it seems like a no-go.

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Well, it might or might not be. Depends on the laptop and what kind of applications you plan to run. You mentioned in another thread that you're looking into buying a new laptop, so I presume you would be looking at either a 1-1.2 GHz iBook or 1.33-1.5 GHz Powerbook. It would run decently on those, I believe, as I had Windows 98 SE running on a 450 MHz Mac, albeit a bit slowly, it worked fine for what I was doing.

May I ask what kinds of PC apps you would want to run?

[Goober]

My Physics Teacher can do this, he has an eMac, and he has a Windows Emulator, and it works decentish, although the grand Irony of having Windows Emulator on a Mac is always present . . .

It is slow though, playing huge games is not advised.

[Comraddict]

haha Mac users need "winblows" . I never heard that Win user needs Mac dinner.

[DiamondzAndGunz]

PearPC

The only reason that we might sometimes need it is due to the fact that some 95% of PC's run windoze, and therefore there are some apps that we may need that don't have an equivalent (yet). Same with linux and it's need for Wine, really. They have an even smaller amount of games/apps being ported over (although more recently, more and more are, especially with the help of Wine).

[FireBall]

Oh, sorry.. I thought you wanted to Run Mac OS on a windows machine...

Yeah, I was going to reccomend PearPC, that was the program I was talking about originally, it works both ways, anyhow I think... but... It will be slow, and you need to have the Windows Install disk, since it is legal, and Windows ROMs are illigal.

[FireBall]

Oh, sorry.. I thought you wanted to Run Mac OS on a windows machine...

Yeah, I was going to reccomend PearPC, that was the program I was talking about originally, it works both ways, anyhow I think... but... It will be slow, and you need to have the Windows Install disk, since it is legal, and Windows ROMs are illigal.

[Sodapop]

Originally Posted by DiamondzAndGunz

There's also Darwine, anyone familiar with Wine for Linux would know that this is not an emulator, just a way of running windows applications on a non-windows system. The Mac port is not yet complete, however.

False. WINE is not an emulator, but to get windows program work on a mac, you need an emulator, as you can't run x86 compiled program on PPC natively (well, as winelib has been ported to OS X, you can compile programs to run on mac, but that's pretty much all you can do without an emulator). The emulator used in Darwine is QEMU.

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/faq.php

[DiamondzAndGunz]

Originally Posted by Sodapop

False. WINE is not an emulator, but to get windows program work on a mac, you need an emulator, as you can't run x86 compiled program on PPC natively (well, as winelib has been ported to OS X, you can compile programs to run on mac, but that's pretty much all you can do without an emulator). The emulator used in Darwine is QEMU.

http://darwine.opendarwin.org/faq.php

I didn't intend say that you could run windows programs without an emulator using Darwine, only that you could with Wine. Nonetheless, thanks for clearing it up, and I wasn't aware of the needed implementation of QEMU (which, according to that faq, they haven't done yet); perhaps I should read up more on these things before posting .

[Sodapop]

Originally Posted by DiamondzAndGunz

I didn't intend say that you could run windows programs without an emulator using Darwine, only that you could with Wine. Nonetheless, thanks for clearing it up, and I wasn't aware of the needed implementation of QEMU (which, according to that faq, they haven't done yet); perhaps I should read up more on these things before posting .

No problem. It wasn't against you anyway, just that it kind of punched me in the face, when I saw something about running x86 compiled apps on a PPC. But I was not quite well informed about Darwine either. I knew it was possible to run x86 windows apps through wine, running inside Bochs, and I was pretty sure that's what Darwine was. But after reading, I was completely wrong.

Anyway, the only part in Darwine that is really something new is the porting of libwine, which allows to compile Windows apps to run natively on Mac. Which could get interesting when it's completly working.