But your decisions don't stop there. There are dozens of tools to choose from. The following three scenarios will put your choices into perspective. Down and dirty. Platform emulators require the least effort for programmers because emulators don't involve development.
Emulators mirror the environment of one OS on another platform.
While programmers don't have to spend any development resources, they do have to accept some significant trade-offs with emulators. Performance often takes a substantial hit. In addition, Unix users have to accept using Windows applications with a non-Motif appearance and behavior. Another simple approach is to deploy X Window System server software on Windows desktops. This works if all you need to do is run X client applications over a network.