this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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My daily needs windows in case my work constantly asks me to install some random application and linux makes that take forever or just wont do it. Have they solved this issue yet? Can I run EXE's in linux yet? I desperately want to ditch windows...
If it's a company computer, it is probably safest to let the company manage it. If it is your personal computer, your job shouldn't be requiring you to install anything on it.
An EXE is a Windows app. This is like asking if you can run an iOS app on Android.
That said yes with Wine but that's a compatibility layer you should be avoiding as much as possible. Games are of course the big exception here, as Proton uses Wine.
Most apps have an open source alternative on Linux. I haven't even given it much thought in years. YMMV of course as people's needs differ.
I hope that your daily driver is 100% paid for and supported by your work. There's no way you should be expected to bring an unsecured advertising and user tracking device into your home, especially on your own hardware.
There are very few reasons why anyone should be using Windows in a professional setting anymore. Any company that does so is taking a huge security risk with company data. I'm sure there are lots of places that do it, but this is due to typical corporate laziness and ignorance.
If your distrobution's maintainers have your package in their repos it will generally only be 3-5 clicks in the GUI package manager or 1-2 lines at the terminal.
Flatpak solved compatibility and library issues, becoming huge in the process. AppImage is basically like an Exe for windows.
This has been possible for over 20 years, but with the more recent changes to WINE most (MOST not ALL) windows apps will work fine but you really shouldn't be trying to use the windows apps unless there's no other option
AppImage isn't like an exe in Windows. It's much more like a App Bundle in MacOS. Way way better than just an .exe
AppImage is still kinda trash though.
I begrudgingly prefer AppImage to being told to make make install, at this point. You know those little projects that will never go into a standard repo or flatpak. For example, some ham radios used a converter box that hooked up to a Windows 95 PC via serial so you could program its internal memory. Well, none of that shit exists anymore. so some guy somewhere has written a thing to do it with a Raspberry Pi's GPIO. 444 people in the world will ever download and use this software. I'd rather you AppImage that than tell me to git clone make make install.
Only if done wrong. They are brilliant in general.
I'm not familiar with app bundles, and tbh my only experience with exe's are the kind that are just zip files with a different extension. I'd assumed that under the hood they were similar, but I guess I never actually checked.
There are virtually no .exes that are zip files with another extensionm. They are executable binary files and nearly always require a slew of support files (just like Linux binary executables)
Is that not common anymore? I remember back in the day I'd commonly end up with installers that were just self exteacting archives with a little extra. Idk I haven't used windows basically at all in at least a decade
Installers. The vast majority of .exes are not installers. The thing you actually run would be an .exe (and all the other files) deployed by the installer to some directory.
Right. That makes sense, thank you for clearing it up.