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LinuxDig.Com : Common Cross-Platform Applications Listed and Revisited for Windows, Linux and OS X. Author: HumanX | Wednesday December 08, 2004 Are you running multiple operating systems? Would you like the capability to run the same applications across all of them? Here is a list of many common applications for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Also listed in this article are emulators which allow you to commingle operating systems running concurrently on one computer. Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to learn a new application for each operating system you work on? Wouldn’t it be nice if the data on one computer could be shared and utilized as on another computer with another type of operating system? Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to buy a new license of a product for each computer and operating system? If you said yes, then you are quickly becoming a lover of open source software and the power it brings you. I write this article because I myself do work on multiple operating systems and I like consistency when it comes to common applications such as email, web browsing and so forth. But what you will find in this article is that there is a variety of some very powerful applications available to you freely as well What this article also attempts to show you is that you are not locked into any one operating system. This article can also help you make the transition from Windows to Linux by showing you alternate programs you can learn on in Windows and take to Linux. The key here is just to take the time and in just a few days you can learn many or all of these programs and be well on your way to a portable computing experience. This list of applications is not a list of limited cross-platform applications that are available, but is a list of applications I myself use everyday or items I thought may be helpful to others. Each of these applications (not the emulators) are all high quality projects and rank with most commercial applications. The benefit to you is free software and the advantage of freeing yourself from the operating system lock-in. One of the things I am finding when I write these articles is that many old/new programs are becoming cross-platform. With many new tools available which help developers achieve cross-platform development; we the end users get to enjoy the benefits of choice, not the choices that are forced upon us because of the operating system we choose to use. For Developers: I listed a few projects which may be of interest to you. These projects can help you take your limited code and achieve cross-platform independence which ultimately expands your marketing capability. Cross-Platform Applications Title Developer Category Description Comments DAILY PROGRAMS   Firefox Mozilla Web Browser It is one of the fastest web browsers today, it has a small memory footprint and more secure then most browsers.   Thunderbird Mozilla eMail The cousin of Firefox, a fast email client supporting most email protocols today, POP, SMTP, IMAP and multiple accounts.   Calendar Mozilla PIM A plugin for Firefox which offers the capability of individual or groupware calendaring. Still in development (Beta), but a full working version is available for Netscape. (Netscape is based on Gecko or the code the drives Mozilla Web Projects)   Open Office OpenOffice.org Office Sun spent 500 million dollars for this fantastic office suite and released it to the world! It has it all, Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Illustration,Presentations and more.   Blender Blender.org 3d The open source 3d rendering, 3d design and compositing application.Once a commercial product but purchased by a team of die hard's for 100,000dollars and released to the open source world. In my opinion, one of the most robust, professional open source applications. It is also a very active project. Blender is on par with most commercial 3d applications.   Audacity Mixed Audio The open source, audacious, active audio project. This is a fantastic application which like blender could replace most applications in the same category. It is still a youthful project so the GUI is not as pretty :)as other apps, but it is fully functional, powerful and easy to use. Supports multiple tracks, full list of filters and just about anything you would expect to find in a commercial audio editor.   The Gimp The Gimp Team Image A Photoshop killer? Not yet and may not be as the Gimp Team does not have that in there plans. But The Gimp is a robust image editing package with most capabilities of Photoshop, Photopaint and so forth. The Gimp also gave us the GTK libraries which are the driving GUI force behind many applications today and the famous Linux based Gnome.   GAIM Mixed Instant Messaging Got to love it. Supports most communication protocols like Yahoo, AOL Instant Messenger, ICQ, Microsoft Messenger and many others. Best of all,it supports multiple account simultaneously. GAIM at this time works on MAC OS/X in the X11 environment and the binaries can be downloaded and installed using Fink (Information on fink located below).   UTILITIES   Acrobat Reader Adobe PDF You know what it is, that darn program which starts up while you are browsing the web. It is here to stay though and it is cross platform.   Real Player Real Networks Audio/Video The same as above but allows cross platform Audio and Video.       VNC RealVNC Remote Control VNC (Virtual Network Computing) software makes it possible to view and fully-interact with one computer from any other computer or mobile device anywhere on the Internet. VNC software is cross-platform, allowing remote control between different types of computer. For ultimate simplicity,there is even a Java viewer, so that any desktop can be controlled remotely from within a browser without having to install software. * Mac OS X: The version of the Mac is currently called OSXVNC. and the viewer is called Chicken of the VNC. Links to these items can be found on the VNC resources page or read the FAQ.   DEVELOPMENT TOOLS   Mono Open / Novell Development Mono is a comprehensive open source development platform based on the .NET framework that allows developers to build Linux and cross-platform applications with unprecedented productivity. Mono's .NET implementation is based on the ECMA standards for C# and the Common Language Infrastructure. Sponsored by Novell the Mono project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community. Mono includes both developer tools and the infrastructure needed to run .NET client and server applications. Some say this could be the Java killer. This open source project comes with a complete suite of tools for you to begin developing cross-platform applications.   GCC Compiler GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java,and Ada, as well as libraries for these languages (libstdc++,libgcj,...).   WxWidgets Open Development Library wxWidgets gives you a single,easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms. Linkwith the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac, others coming shortly) and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to that platform.On top of great GUI functionality, wxWidgets gives you: online help,network programming, streams, clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading,image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support,HTML viewing and printing, and much much more   * All applications above except for Real Player are developed by the Open Community (That is anyone and everyone who wishes and can contribute either through development or donations). Developer Names listed are used when an Actual Legal Entity exists like Non Profit Corporations but this does not limit the scope of the community. Emulators, Virtualization and More Many of these applications allow you to run multiple operating systems on one computer or allow you to run software from other operating systems. Title Description x86 Windows x86 Linux PPC / OS X http://www.maconlinux.org/ Mac-on-Linux is a linux/ppc program which makes it possible to run Mac OS in parallel with Linux. MOL is primarily intended to be used by those who run linux/ppc as their main operating system but still want to be able to run that occasional Mac OS application. Other possible applications include:     X http://www.apple.com Mac OS X has a full Linux (BSD) operating system driving the GUI interface. Apple has ported X11 to Max OS X giving the end user the ability to not only run Mac Applications but most Linux command line and Gui applications. A package manager exists for OS/X which is similar to YUM or Up2Date called Fink. Fink gives you the ability to download source or precompiled open source applications. http://fink.sourceforge.net . Most Linux applications need only be recompiled for OS/X to work within its environment.   X Apps and Command Line X http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/ " Windows Services for UNIX 3.5 provides a full range of cross-platform services for blending Windows and UNIX-based environments. With Windows Services for UNIX 3.5, IT professionals can transfer UNIX-based tools and utilities they are already familiar with to the Windows platform and extend the value of their UNIX applications." Basically, it gives you a *nix shell on Windows allowing you to run and compile *nix applications. I am not sure if GUI applications are available. But if you have an X client for windows, you should be able to run most *nix applications.       http://www.vmware.com VMWare is one of the most robust virtualization packages for the X86 environment. Allowing you to run just about any major operating system (except Mac OS's) on the X86 platform. This includes Netware! It is a commercial product but is reasonably priced and allows you to run up to 10 operating systems at once. Side Note: I give this application a 10, it is fairly fast, reliable and easy to use. X X   http://www.win4lin.com The NeTraverse product suite delivers the fastest and most cost-effective, resource-efficient, high-performance solution for running Windows applications on Linux - NeTraverse Win4LinTM 5.0 and NeTraverse Server Standard Edition. Both are integral to reducing an operation's Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), while providing an improved user experience. As of this writing, only supports Windows 98 & ME.   X   http://www.winehq.org Think of Wine as a Windows compatibility layer. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely alternative implementation consisting of 100% Microsoft-free code, Note: Not the easiest of applications to use and IT DOES NOT replace Microsoft Windows. That being said, if your version of Linux comes with Wine installed, their is a good chance that most common applications will work with it. Each new release of Wine brings it a little closer to being trouble free, supporting more applications and easier to use. Their is an extensive list of applications that do run with Wine on there website.   X Some Support http://www.plex86.org Welcome to the new plex86 project. Plex86 has been rehashed/revitalized to offer a very lightweight Virtual Machine (VM) for running Linux/x86. Rather than implement a full and heavyweight VM which can run all guest Operating Systems (OSes), the new approach is designed to run only Linux VMs, making the new plex86 architecture on the order of 10x or 100x more simplistic.   X   http://bochs.sourceforge.net/ Bochs is a highly portable open source IA-32 (x86) PC emulator written in C++, that runs on most popular platforms. It includes emulation of the Intel x86 CPU, common I/O devices, and a custom BIOS. Currently, Bochs can be compiled to emulate a 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro or AMD64 CPU, including optional MMX, SSE, SSE2 and 3DNow instructions.   X   http://open-beos.sourceforge.net OpenBeOS is a project dedicated to the re-creation, followed by the extension, of the BeOS. Individual servers and APIs (known as kits) are being re-written from scratch by an enthusiastic team of volunteers who want to continue the revolution started by Be Inc. The kernel is being based on NewOS, a microkernel written by a former Be engineer, and adapted by a dedicated team of hard core programmers.   X   http://user-mode-linux.sourceforge.net/ User-Mode Linux is a safe, secure way of running Linux versions and Linux processes. Run buggy software, experiment with new Linux kernels or distributions, and poke around in the internals of Linux, all without risking your main Linux setup. User-Mode Linux gives you a virtual machine that may have more hardware and software virtual resources than your actual, physical computer. Disk storage for the virtual machine is entirely contained inside a single file on your physical machine. You can assign your virtual machine only the hardware access you want it to have. With properly limited access, nothing you do on the virtual machine can change or damage your real computer, or its software.   X   http://www.microsoft.com Virtual PC is a powerful software virtualization solution that allows you to run multiple PC-based operating systems simultaneously on one workstation, providing a safety net to maintain compatibility with legacy applications while you migrate to a new operating system. It also saves reconfiguration time, so your support, development, and training staff can work more efficiently. Microsoft released Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 on December 2, 2003. Though somewhat cross platform one of the limitations of this system is that you are forced to purchase different versions depending on the operating system you want to run with it.This is the only option for Mac Users, x86 (Linux - Windows) users should seriously consider VMWare instead. X   X If you know of other applications that run on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X that fit into the realm of common applications (or fill a category I have not listed) or if you have comments, questions or suggestions please feel free to use the "Contact LinuxDig" link on the navigation bar of this page.