.exe

StarLee

Registered
how to open a bloody windows program on my mac? i need to use this program for uni but its only available for bloody windows. :mad:
the program is .exe .... what a slack! :confused:
 
ok folks, this is probably a really dumb question, but can anyone tell me exactly what a .exe document is ? I have officeX for mac that opens word /
poserpt stuff but not .exe...... some windows folks tried to explain it but said it indicates.... blah blah......... which I didnt understand...... any mac folks who can give a SIMPLE clear explanation what it is and how it differs from word etc?

thanks

sue
Newnan, GA
 
esuebrown said:
ok folks, this is probably a really dumb question, but can anyone tell me exactly what a .exe document is ? I have officeX for mac that opens word /
poserpt stuff but not .exe...... some windows folks tried to explain it but said it indicates.... blah blah......... which I didnt understand...... any mac folks who can give a SIMPLE clear explanation what it is and how it differs from word etc?

thanks

sue
Newnan, GA

It's a program. it RUNS on winblows. No Mac will run it witout an emulator like VPC.
 
Well, quite simply, .exe is the extension for an EXEcutable, or Application, on a Windows computer (the extension under OS X for an application is .app, BTW).
An .exe cannot be run on a Mac because it is compiled for an X86 processor, the processor a PC uses, not the PowerPC processor that a Macintosh is built around.

You are able to open a word (.doc) file (and many others: .txt, .html, .rtf, .gif, .jpg, .bmp, for example) on both Mac and PC because they are not compiled. In other words, they are not Applications. They are merely data that an application, running on either Mac OR PC, can interpret.
Not to complicate things, but there are some applications that can be opened both Mac and PC (and others: Linux, etc.). These include applications coded in Java. The reason for this is that they are also interpreted, not compiled (part of the reason Java apps are so slow). To run a Java program you must have the correct Libraries installed for your OS.

a_iver: That is not quite correct. Darwine will not run .exes without emulation. In order to run a .exe you must have an X86 processor, so Darwine will have an X86 emulator built in. I'm not sure how they'll do this, but if you go look, it's on their site.
 
But wait a second we have X11(XFree86). That's what they were using in the screenshot. If other ported applications can come from Linux to Mac why can't we do that with Wine? You got me curious now.
 
"No. We are currently working on integrating an x86 emulator in wine in order to run Win32 exe on a PowerPC Box. But on Darwin-x86 a Win32 .exe should run within wine."
-From FAQ


Ahh.
 
a_iver: The Mac OS X operating system is based on Unix, in essence it is a Unix operating system underneath the Mac interface that the end user sees. That's why it is a relatively easy task for software makers to bring software from Unix/Linux to Mac.

EXE files, however, are built to run on a DOS/Windows environment and often use code that accesses the x86 processor directly. They also "talk" in commands that are only found in the Windows environment. So what's the problem? Firstly, Windows is a closely guarded proprietary environment owned by Microsoft, while Linux/Unix (more or less) is based on open-source code that is freely available. The second difference is that the PowerPC processors used in Macs has a completely different structure to the x86 based processors used in PCs.

Programs like Virtual PC and Bochs emulate a PC by "pretending" that they are a PC hardware. They take the EXE file and handle it in the same way that a PC would by working out how a PC would respond to the code. It takes each little bit of code and works out how a PC processor would deal with it, by translating it into something the Mac can handle.

WINE is different to other emulators. It replaces the Windows part of the environment, but it doesn't try and emulate an x86 processor. Instead, WINE was originally designed to run on PCs with Linux installed instead of Windows. This is slowly being altered to become platform independent, but it still only emulates some of the Windows environment and some of the processor functions. Thus it can currently run some windows software on PCs and even less on Mac.
 
Ooh baby! Now that's food for the soul :D. Thanks for the info, you answered all of my questions, thanks. I'm gonna have to copy that to my hard drive.
 
Zammy-Sam said:
So, what happened to StarLee? The question of the thread-starter answered? :)

He's probably in a dark corner holding his head 'cos it hurts so much .. too much information for the little fella... :D
 
umm .. I'm back!
thanks guys for the answers! But ... Virtual PC is too expensive for moi ...
grr .. need to save money for this coz I might need it in the future!
btw, if I open a windows program with Virtual PC, can I save the document too?
thanks again!

p.s. I'm a SHE
 
StarLee said:
... If I open a windows program with Virtual PC, can I save the document too?

Yes! Of course you can.

What ever application you're using on Windows will allow you to save what you're doing, just the same way as they would when running on a full-blown pc.

What you can do -- and this is what I tend to do -- I set up a shared folder within VirtualPC; which can be any folder you create on your mac, and save your files there.

That way, both your mac and pc can see and work with the same files.

The shared folder shows up as a mounted volume on your pc.

StarLee said:
p.s. I'm a SHE

Sorry missis .. didn't know you were a Sheila!.. :D
 
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