Strictly speaking, the answer is no. Linux can not run Windows applications natively but there is software available that allows a certain degree of compatibility between the platforms. Several options are outlined below:

• Citrix - We have a Citrix Presentation Server available for CS graduate students, faculty, and staff. With Citrix, you can run a variety of Windows applications on the server and display them back on the display of your Linux machine. Available applications include Microsoft Office (Access, Excel, Powerpoint, and Word), Internet Explorer, and Adobe Acrobat. See the Citrix Server page for more information.

• VMware - VMware is software that provides a virtual machine that lets you run other X86-based operating systems (such as Windows) under Linux. Please see the VMware Help Page for more information.

• OpenOffice - The OpenOffice suite of office software is available on the CS Linux machines. These provide a word processor, spreadsheet, drawing tool, and presentation tool that can read and write most of the MS Office format files (.doc, .xls, .ppt). You can start these tools by running ooffice.

• Instant Messaging - Most of the popular IM protocols (including AOL, Yahoo, MSN, and ICQ) are supported by pidgin (formerly known as gaim), which is installed on the CS linux machines.

• Wine - Wine is an open source implementation of the Windows API and can be used to run some Windows applications under Linux.

Please see the Associated FAQ if you are looking for a way to open Microsoft Office 2007 file formats (docx, pptx, xlsx) files on the Linux systems.

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