Wine, you say? What a fabulous idea! Let’s get my computer drunk, to make it think it’s running Windows! Then I can get MS-Office running on Linux/OS X!

Wine is a normal application run under a non-Windows, x86 OS, that acts as a compatibility layer between the OS and the Windows application. Wine (which stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator), is well-maintained, and is available for Linux, Darwin & OS X, Solaris, and FreeBSD.

To run a Windows executable, you would go to your applications list / folder, browse to your executable, and double click. It’s that simple! It installs programs by aliasing folders (ie the My Documents folder would be Home in Linux). What’s nice is that it even organizes your programs just like a start menu!

PS: For all you gamers, it handles most games really well (ie Half-Life 2 and CS:Source). If you’d rather pay for software, try Cedega, which is made for games, and runs them with unparalleled speed.