Wine was originally an acronym for “Wine is not an emulator”. Now, we simply call it Wine. It is an open-source windows compatibility layer through which we can run windows applications on Ubuntu or any other supported Linux distribution. It should never be considered as an alternative to Windows operating system. There are multiple methods to install Wine but, we will be doing it through Ubuntu’s standard repository.
The development of Wine started in 1993. Windows applications, at the time had very few alternatives. With Linux based distributions still evolving, Wine took the center-stage. Therefore, those who couldn’t afford Windows operating system for variety of reasons, were able to run applications that were specifically developed for it.
At the time of writing the article, Wine supports 26,000-odd applications.
Install Wine on Ubuntu
1. If you don’t have superuser privileges then, contact your system administrator for assistance.
2. We will be installing Wine from Ubuntu’s standard repository. To update the Ubuntu standard repository –
sudo apt update
3. To install Wine –
sudo apt install wine64
Lastly, to check the wine version installed, run the following in terminal –
wine --version
Furthermore, if the installation gets completed without errors, then it should return with the installed version. However, the version installed may differ for different Ubuntu versions.
5. Next, we will be installing a windows application through Wine –
First download the .exe file of the Windows application that you want to run inside Ubuntu.
In the Ubuntu terminal –
wine <.exe-file>
This will take you to default installation procedure that you do just before installing any Windows application. Subsequently, finish the installation process. You would find the installed application in the application menu of your desktop environment. For example, for LXDE desktop environment it would be accessible through main menu.
Conclusion
Thus, with emulator Wine we can install Windows applications that don’t have alternatives available for Linux distributions yet. Being open-source it brings all the associated benefits. With Wine, we can even remotely access Windows applications too.
