If you are invested in Windows software… don’t run Linux. Being able to run Windows software is like a “patch” to get you by until you find a Linux equivalent. Pretending you can have your cake and eat it too will just leave you disappointed.

Linux has amazing software… but in most cases it feels very different from Windows. If you learn why it is different then you may start to appreciate Linux for what it gives you rather than what it takes from you.

How in the world did they manage that? Did they implement it internally as a TCP API and expose it?

IANAL … but if you do use it, copy it to your own server so all those accesses don’t suck up the bandwidth of the person you copied it from.