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Darwine, the OS X port of the popular wine compatibility layer, has reached a stable version 1.0. Thanks to Mike over at kronenberg.org, it is available pre-compiled and ready to run. Until now, the alternative has been to download the source from SourceForge, which requires compiling the code. Version 1 updates include localization fixes for Danish, Spanish, and German, as well as performance and stability improvements for graphics-intensive applications. Darwine requires Tiger or Leopard, running on any Intel-based Mac.

The wine project seeks to deliver an open source implementation of the Microsoft Win32 API, to allow for source-code level compatibility between Microsoft Windows applications and other OS platforms, including Unix, various flavors of Linux, and Mac OS X. This is the key difference between wine and emulators such as Parallels and VMWare, which deliver a virtual machine in which Windows can run. Wine does not require a valid Windows license, as do emulators; rather it provides an open source version of the Windows API. Darwine is the Mac OS X-specific compile of the wine source code. 

As an open source application, Darwine offers several benefits that emulators do not. First, the price tag: it’s free. Parallels or VMWare both require a license, plus the cost of a Windows license. Another benefit is the extensibility of Darwine—since the source code is open and available, it is possible to customize the functionality to meet specific user requirements. And finally, Darwine offers the access to the power and functionality of OS X, while retaining native compatibility with any mission-critical Windows applications.

Via [Low End Mac]