Wine
| Developed by | Wine Team |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 0.9.23 / October 13 2006 |
| OS | Linux, other Unix-like systems |
| Type | Compatibility layer |
| License | GNU Lesser General Public License |
| Website | http://www.winehq.org/ |
The Wine project aims to allow any PC running a Unix-like operating system and the X Window System to use programs originally written for various versions of Microsoft Windows and also allow those wishing to port a Windows application to a Unix-like system to compile it against the Wine libraries.[1]
Contents |
History
Wine used to be extremely buggy and pretty much useless for running anything. However, this has improved over the years and the latest versions of Wine now actually allow you to run a few Windows programs,
Wine Is Not an Emulator
Wine is a free software implementation of the Windows API. It does not emulate anything. Software written to run using the Windows API which does not use system calls should run just as fast or faster than they do on Windows.[2]
The API implementation is not complete. The APIs are supposed to do what the Windows implementation do, but they don't always do that. Indeed many of them can not, because they are implemented as four-line long stubs.
Native DLLs
It is possible to use native Windows DLLs instead of those built into Wine for increased compatibility with the Windows software you want to run.
Compatible Windows programs
A large percentage of Windows programs run just fine in Wine. Many simply don't work. Others barely work and crash all the time.
Microsoft Office 2003 and Adobe Photoshop 7 work just fine.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer is a reason many Linux users would want Wine. While it is a crappy good-for-nothing piece-o-junk, many people use it - and thus; people making web-sites on Linux need IE to check if that browser manages to show the site anywhere near the way it's displayed in real browsers like Firefox and Konqueror.
Luckily, there is a great project called "IEs 4 Linux"[3] which allows you to install and use IE 5, IE 5.5 and IE 6 on any Linux-box. It is a simple script that downloads and installs this "software", installs it and configures Wine to use them. This script, tested with Wine 0.9.23, works like a charm. Just ran the script, wait a while, and volla - you've got IE. It even installs flash-support..
Control Panel
You may access the "Windows" control panel with the command
wine control
