Run Windows Apps in Linux with Bottles
I ran into an issues with updating an older machine my grandmother has to the newest version of Window 11. After hours of work across various weekends I finally decided to just take a day when she wouldn't be home to work on it in depth (with her blessing of course).
Well, long story short I couldn't get this old machine to update to the newest version of Windows. This isn't really a problem right now as the version of Windows she's on is still supported by Microsoft. But at some point, I'll have to either have her buy a new PC or try to install an OS that is more friendly on older hardware.
So along this line I set out to see if some of the software she uses the most might run on Linux. Now, I could use WINE for this but I think I've always struggled with managing WINE programs since all Windows EXEs seem to need their own settings for best performance on Linux. That's where I discovered Bottles.
As their website says, "Bottles is an application that allows you to easily manage Windows prefixes on your favorite Linux distribution." Essentially it does exactly what I was looking for. You set up "bottles" with specific settings for each program and Bottles creates individual sandboxes for each.
I'm tinkering with this currently and I'll report back in another post my findings for my situation. But since the PC in question might not be replaced for a few years still, I wanted to write this quick post to get the word out about Bottles in case someone out there was looking for an easier way to manage their Windows prefixes on Linux.