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I recently stumbled over the Ubuntu for Tablets video, where Mark Shuttleworth presents how Ubuntu is going to look on tablets.

However, he said one thing that struck me at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h384z7Ph0gU&t=5m15s. He said that Ubuntu could run "all Windows apps".

How does this work? Was he talking about Wine (which definitely can't run every Windows program) or did he mean something else?

muru
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s3lph
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  • Many Windows-8 apps can be web-apps, which was the plan for Ubuntu-touch as well, maybe he's referring to easy porting of existing apps? – NoBugs Sep 23 '14 at 01:29

3 Answers3

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He said: "all Windows apps as a thin client". Since "thin clients" usually involve program execution elsewhere, presumably this means via remote desktop or something similar. And the Ubuntu for Android page mentions Citrix thin clients.

muru
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And of course you can run a licensed version of Windows as a guest OS in a Virtual Machine using Ubuntu as the host (which I guess would sort of be cheating because you are running Windows and not Ubuntu ;). This will work with most Windows programs, but you can occasionally run into issues with application licensing that won't run in a VM and/or hardware requirements that can't be satisfied by the VM.

Walter Wittel
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As you wrote in your question, Wine definitely can't run every Windows program. You can search for a particular Windows application at the WineHQ website, and it will tell you whether that application is supported by Wine. If the Windows application is supported by Wine, WineHQ will also show a rating (Garbage/Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum) of how well that application runs on Wine.

karel
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