Go4Expert - WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux

Introduction

WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a free software application that aims to allow Unix-like computer operating systems to execute programs written for Microsoft Windows. Wine also provides a software library known as Winelib against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.
The most important aspect obviously is, its free!!

Systems Supported by Wine

Ubuntu
Debian
RedHat
CentOS
Fedora
SUSE
Mandriva
Slackware
FreeBSD
PC-BSD
Solaris 10
SXCE
OpenSolaris

Top 5 Windows applications that run with WINE

Games

Final Fantasy X! Online Final Fantasy XI
Warhammer Online Live
World Of Warcraft 3.1x
Magic: The Gathering Online 3.x
EVE Online 6.13x

Multimedia

MediaMonkey 3.0.6.1190
Adobe Lightroom 2.3
Adobe Audition 1.5
Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Standard
Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.0 Preferred

Networking And Communication

Microsoft Outlook 2007
Xfire 1.102
QQ (oicq) QQ2007II
Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger) 8.5 (Windows Live Messenger)
ActiveSync 4.5

Productivity

Flash CS3
Microsoft Office (installer only) 2007
Dreamweaver CS 3
Dreamweaver 8.x
Word 2007

Programming

.NET Framework 2.0
Visual Studio 2008 (9.0)
NET Framework 3.5
Visual FoxPro 9
WinterMute Engine 1.7.x

The list is quite longer then above, this is just to give you an idea of it..

Importance of this software

To replace windows, we need to have more of linux users, to have more linux users we need to have more linux softwares, to have more linux softwares we need to have linux users thus we go back to where we started. To solve this problem, wine acts like a mediator where it will allow linux users to use windows application on linux thus growing the number of linux users and thus growing linux applications available in the market.
Also it will decrease our dependency on Windows Operating System overall, without leaving out on our favorite games and applications.
Also some may argue, we can use VMware for this, Well sure, but Vmware is not free! And moreover you will be running an OS over another OS which is resource wise costly!! (Link to what is VMware - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_Workstation)

Wine Benefits

Some of the benefits Wine can provide over Windows right now:

Wine makes it possible to take advantage of all the Unix strong points (stability, flexibility, remote administration) while still using the Windows applications you depend on.
Unix has always made it possible to write powerful scripts. Wine makes it possible to call Windows applications from scripts that can also leverage the Unix environment to its full extent.
Wine makes it possible to access Windows applications remotely, even if they are a few thousand miles away.
Wine makes it economical to use thin clients: simply install Wine on a Linux server, and voila, you can access these Windows applications from any X terminal.
Wine can also be used to make existing Windows applications available on the Web by using VNC and its Java client.
Wine is Open Source Software, so you can extend it to suit your needs or have one of many companies do it for you.

Microsoft and Wine

Microsoft has generally not made public statements about Wine. However, the Microsoft Update software will block updates to Microsoft application software running in Wine-based environments. On February 16, 2005, Ivan Leo Puoti discovered that Microsoft had started checking the Windows registry for the Wine configuration key and would block the Windows Update for any component. Puoti wrote, "It's ... the first time Microsoft has acknowledged the existence of Wine."

The Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) system also checks for existence of Wine registry keys. The WGA FAQ states that WGA, by design, will not run in Wine, as Wine does not constitute "genuine Windows". When WGA validation detects Wine running on the system, it will notify users that they are running non-genuine Windows and disallow genuine Windows downloads for that system. Despite this, some reports have circulated of the WGA system working in Wine, although this loophole has now been closed with the next WGA component update. In the case of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player, Microsoft has since removed the WGA requirements.

Myths

Some of the myths about Wine, which are not true.

"Wine is slow because it is an emulator"
"Wine is bad for Linux"
"Emulators like VMware are better"
"You need Windows anyway"
"Wine is bad, Winelib is better"
"Wine will always be playing catch up to Windows and can't possibly succeed at running new applications"
"Because Wine only implements a small percentage of the Windows APIs, it's always going to suck"
"Wine is only for Windows 3.1 / Wine will never support Win64"
"Wine is for Linux only"
"Wine is for Intel x86 only"
"My game has copy protection that doesn't work with Wine"

Download

Finally, to download and install here's the link.
http://www.winehq.org/download

References

http://www.winehq.org/why
http://appdb.winehq.org/index.php
http://appdb.winehq.org/
http://www.winehq.org/myths#emulators_better - To Read more detailed explanation of myths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_%28software%29
http://wiki.winehq.org/HowTo

Thanks for reading :)
Have A Nice Day!!