Wine, Crossover Office, and Cedega
WATER OR WINE?
If you need to make a Windows application run on Linux, there is no better way than Wine. We investigated the free and commercial Wine variants to see how they bear up under real-life conditions.
In 1993, Sun Microsystems developed a small tool designed to let users run Windows applications in Solaris out of the box – that is, without needing to port the applications first. Just a few months later, the first attempt was made to make the tool run on BSD and Linux, and this step marks the birth of what has now become known as the Wine project. The name Wine, an acronym in typical GNU tradition, stands for “Wine is not an Emulator.” And Wine [1] really isn’t an emulator in the traditional sense. The tool neither emulates a different kind of CPU, nor, strictly speaking, an operating system. Instead Wine inserts itself as a translation layer between Linux and the Windows application the user wants to run. It intercepts any Windows API calls made by the application and attempts to convert them to equivalent Unix and X11 calls. From a technical point of view, Wine is a loader, which loads and
launches Windows programs, and a suite of libraries that translate or emulate Windows API calls.
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.
-
Gnome 48 Debuts New Audio Player
To date, the audio player found within the Gnome desktop has been meh at best, but with the upcoming release that all changes.
-
Plasma 6.3 Ready for Public Beta Testing
Plasma 6.3 will ship with KDE Gear 24.12.1 and KDE Frameworks 6.10, along with some new and exciting features.
-
Budgie 10.10 Scheduled for Q1 2025 with a Surprising Desktop Update
If Budgie is your desktop environment of choice, 2025 is going to be a great year for you.
-
Firefox 134 Offers Improvements for Linux Version
Fans of Linux and Firefox rejoice, as there's a new version available that includes some handy updates.
-
Serpent OS Arrives with a New Alpha Release
After months of silence, Ikey Doherty has released a new alpha for his Serpent OS.
-
HashiCorp Cofounder Unveils Ghostty, a Linux Terminal App
Ghostty is a new Linux terminal app that's fast, feature-rich, and offers a platform-native GUI while remaining cross-platform.
-
Fedora Asahi Remix 41 Available for Apple Silicon
If you have an Apple Silicon Mac and you're hoping to install Fedora, you're in luck because the latest release supports the M1 and M2 chips.
-
Systemd Fixes Bug While Facing New Challenger in GNU Shepherd
The systemd developers have fixed a really nasty bug amid the release of the new GNU Shepherd init system.