Test-driving Bordeaux 2.0.8

“We, as computer users, run applications — all sorts of them.
We browse the web with an program, send e-mail via another, write
up reports, crunch numbers, listen to music, transfer files and
store contacts using a long list of different applications. There
are thousands upon thousands of programs floating around the
digital world and there’s one problem: they don’t all run on your
operating system. Almost all of us, at one time or another, will
come to a point where we have an operating system and matching
programs that do almost everything we want and, on the other hand,
a program which doesn’t run natively on our OS of choice.
Fortunately there are ways of dealing with this. Some people
dual-boot their systems and deal with the awkward transition
between platforms. Others use virtual machines and work with the
overhead involved with running two systems at the same time. A
third option is to build compatibility into one OS so that it can
run programs designed for a different OS and that’s where Bordeaux
comes in.

“The Bordeaux Technology Group is a company specializing in
compatibility software. Specifically, they work at making it as
easy as possible to run Windows programs on the UNIX family of
operating systems. Their Bordeaux tool is built to run on Linux,
FreeBSD, Solaris, OpenIndiana and Mac OS X. Bordeaux is, at its
heart, a customized build of Wine. They take a recent version of
Wine, add some special tools and test their build for compatibility
against a group of popular Windows software.”

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