Right now, there are two primary ways to run Windows programs on your Mac: Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop. Well, there is also a third way, called Darwine. Darwine is a project run by OpenDarwin project which uses the WINE compatibility layer to run Windows programs on a Mac without Windows installed. Of course, Darwine is in its beta stage and is no where near perfect, though it does run certain programs very well. To get started with Darwine, you’ll need an Intel Mac (it does work with PPC Macs using the open-source emulator QEMU, though so far I’ve only tested it on an Intel Mac) and Darwine 0.9.10 (I tried using the latest version, 0.9.12, but it wouldn’t open any programs). To install Darwine, simply drag the Darwine folder to your Applications directiory. Then, you’re going to want to install Xcode Tools and X11 from your Tiger install disc (if you have Panther, you’ll need to get X11 from Apple’s website). After that, download FreeType and install it by going to the directory where you extracted it in the Terminal and typing:
./configure && make && sudo make install
Now you’re ready to run some programs. To start off open some of the included .exe files in /Applications/Darwine/Sample WineLib Applications. If you installed everything right, they should open in WineHelper and X11 and run fine. But more advanced and useful programs, such as graphics-intense video games, may not run quite as smoothly. Most programs I have not been able to successfully run, including Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2, Windows Media Player 11 Beta, and Star Wars Galaxies, though Adobe Photoshop is supposedly able to run, and do so much faster than under Rosseta. Still, Darwine is highly unstable (trying to run Gamemaker gave my Mac a kernel panic), and doesn’t run most programs, though I think that very soon Darwine will become a viable alternative to Parallels and Boot Camp.
