A close look at this screen shot will make your head hurt. This isn’t a Photoshop trick or Wine in action – it’s Windows XP SP3 running on Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) with VirtualBox in seemless mode.
As a web developer, I have to bow to the reality that some folks really do use Internet Explorer and need to test my sites using several versions. While I have used IE4Linux in the past to test IE 5.5 and 6.0, and even IE4Linux beta version with IE7 support, the release of IE8 has forced me to try something different.
VirtualBox, in this case, VirtualBox OSE ( Open Source Edition ) 3.0.8. Using a legit copy of XP ( No pirates here – Arrrrr, me Matey! ) I created a small virtual disk, installed and updated Windows to current patch level including IE8, then downloaded IECollection to add stand-alone installs of IE6 and IE7. Out of curiosity, I clicked the “Seemless Mode” menu option and ended up with this monstrosity.
I am beginning to understand why people protest against GMOs – this just ain’t natural!
There is also Wine (http://www.winehq.org/), it allows Linux to execute .exe files, not all of them, but it’s an alternative for people with old computers.