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

1. Ubuntu
2. Debian
3. RedHat
4. CentOS
5. Fedora
6. SUSE
7. Mandriva
8. Slackware
9. FreeBSD
10. PC-BSD
11. Solaris 10
12. SXCE
13. OpenSolaris

Top 5 Windows applications that run with WINE

Games

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

Multimedia

1. MediaMonkey 3.0.6.1190
2. Adobe Lightroom 2.3
3. Adobe Audition 1.5
4. Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Standard
5. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.0 Preferred

Networking And Communication

1. Microsoft Outlook 2007
2. Xfire 1.102
3. QQ (oicq) QQ2007II
4. Windows Live Messenger (MSN Messenger) 8.5 (Windows Live Messenger)
5. ActiveSync 4.5

Productivity

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

Programming

1. .NET Framework 2.0
2. Visual Studio 2008 (9.0)
3. NET Framework 3.5
4. Visual FoxPro 9
5. 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!!

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

Nice Article.

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

Yeah, great and useful article :D

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

A very good replacement for VMWare is VirtualBox http://www.virtualbox.org/ and it's free

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

@pradeep
agreed, but you still will be using an OS over another OS, which requires a good system if not decent...

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

Nominate this article for Article of the month - Jul 2009

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

WINE is generally known as Windows Emulator.
WINE = Win + E = Windows Emulator
WINE is abbreviation of Windows Emulator.

It is helpful in many cases, but some softwares which are dependent upon the services of the windows services, can not run using WINE.

Anyway, Nice Article.

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

i agree it doesnt run everything, but its quite helpful..
and btw its not an emulator but people think it is....

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

Vote for this article for Article of the month - July 2009

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

I dont know how much you know about WINE or definition of the Emulator...

Its just a program which is emulating WINDOWS so that windows based programs can run under Unix Based Systems. Its not even complete emulator.
Its just implementation of Win32 API on the top of X Window System. Its kind of compatibility layer of windows in Linux.

WINE provides you a library named as "winelib" for the development purposes so that developers can port the windows sources to linux.

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

:) i wonder if you know whats the full form of WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator). It is not an emulator.

Read this :-

"1.4. Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be disagreement.

There is a lot of confusion about this, particularly caused by people getting Wine's name wrong and calling it WINdows Emulator.

When users think of an emulator, they tend to think of things like game console emulators or virtualization software. This is the wrong way to think about Wine - Wine runs Windows applications in essentially the same way Windows does. Wine is just a native Unix substitute for the components of Windows; there is no inherent loss of speed due to "emulation" when using Wine, nor is there a need to open Wine before running your application.

That said, Wine can be thought of as a Windows emulator in much the same way that Windows Vista can be thought of as a Windows XP emulator; both allow you to run the same applications by translating system calls in much the same way. Setting Wine to mimic Windows XP is not much different from setting Vista to launch an application in XP compatibility mode.

There are a few things that makes wine more than just an emulator.

* Sections of Wine can be used on Windows. Some virtual machines use Wine's OpenGL-based implementation of Direct3D on Windows rather than truly emulate 3D hardware.
* Winelib can be used for porting windows application source code to other operating systems that Wine supports to run on any processor - even processes that neither Windows nor the Emulator bit of Wine supports.

"Wine is not just an emulator" would be a more correct name. Thinking of Wine as just an emulator is really forgetting about the other things it is. Wine's "emulator" is really just a binary loader that allows Windows applications to interface with the Wine API replacement.

Re: WINE - Software to Run Windows Application on Unix/Linux
 

Thanks a lot ji. I am encountered lot of problems running windows application on linux. Your post s helped me.