LINUX-WINDOWS INTERACTION

One software allowing interaction between Linux and Windows is WINE. Wine allows Linux users to load Windows programs while in the Linux environment (that is, Linux is the host and Windows the guest OS). While you do not need an installed copy of Windows to run Wine, Wine has to be able to ‘see’ a Windows application in order to execute it. Wine is compatible with versions of Windows 98 and later. Wine requires approximately 50 MB RAM for installation and 750 MB of free hard drive space to store and compile the source code. 18 MB are also needed in the /tmp directory.

WINE BASICS FUNCTIONALITY  As of late 2005, most native Microsoft Windows DLLs necessary for the execution of Win32 binaries have compatible Wine counterparts. FEATURES  Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows  Support for running Win32 code  Extensive Unicode and foreign language support  Able to be compiled using a wide range of C compilers  Automatically generated API documentation  Printing via PostScript driver or legacy native Win16 printer drivers  Built-in debugger and configurable trace messages

WINE BASICS  Windows MultiMedia (WinMM) layer support with built in codecs  Support for drivers including ALSA, OSS, among others  Multi-lingual keyboards and CJK input method support via XIM  Modems, serial device support  Network (TCP/IP and IPX) support  Win32 compatible memory layout, exception handling, threads and processes  X11, TrueType (.ttf/.ttc) and Windows Bitmap (.fon) Fonts  DirectX support for games (limited Direct3D support)  Enhanced Metafile (EMF) and Windows Metafile (WMF) driver  ASPI Scanners FEATURES (cont.)

WINE BASICS Wine contains a “program loader that loads and executes a Windows binary (executable file), and a set of libraries that implements Windows API calls using Unix/Linux equivalents” ( There are three methods for installing Wine:  Installation from a package  Installation from a source archive  Installation from a cvs snapshot

WINE INSTALLATION METHODS INSTALLATION FROM A PACKAGE  Wine Headquarters (WineHQ) recommends using this method. These files are available for download from the WineHQ website at  Prepackaged versions may also be found on the installation disks for Linux distributions. Using this method is relatively painless as it would have been installed with the Linux OS, and running the program could be done via the GUI interface of that distro.

INSTALLATION METHODS (CONT) INSTALLATION FROM A SOURCE ARCHIVE  A second method of installation is by “downloading a Wine source archive and compiling from the command line”. Wine source archives are in compressed tar.gz format on the WineHQ website. INSTALLATION FROM A CVS SNAPSHOT  This is done by downloading the very latest source code from the WineHQ CVS server. This option, however, is mainly for developers and those who want to test future functionality of Wine against specific applications. Instructions for this option are available at

CONFIGURING WINE When the config GUI starts, there are seven tabs along the top of the main window: Changing settings in the Applications and Libraries tab affect what and how applications run. The other settings focus on customizing Wine according to preference.  Applications  Libraries  Graphics  Appearance  Drives  Audio  About

CONFIGURING WINE (cont) Adding an application for Wine to run:  Click on the Add application button from the Application tab  Browse for the.exe  After it’s been added, select the specific Windows version (9x or NT-based) Wine will emulate for that application. Setting drive paths  Under the Drives tab click on the Autodetect button to have Wine search for available drives  When a drive is added, a new entry will be made and a default drive mapping will appear. This is the path from which Wine will execute chosen applications

INSTALLING WINE Installation from a distro or a precompiled package is done in the usual way using available utilities. Installing from source may be done using the following steps :  Uninstall previous packages To do this, f rom the terminal  Log in as root  Navigate to the folder where Wine was installed  Then, type at the command prompt: make uninstall This command should remove all Wine binary files from the system

INSTALLING WINE  Get build dependencies  Use the Winecfg tool, which should have been installed during Wine  Start Winecfg using a terminal window by typing from the prompt: /usr/local/bin/winecfg or simply winecfg This command starts the GUI interface program and will build the dependencies as configured. Once build dependencies have been configured, the next step is to compile.  Compile commands :  /configure  make depend  make  make install  Once compilation is complete, installation is also complete and the next step is to use Wine to run an application

RUNNING WINE Running a Win application from Wine is done according to the Path environment variable set in the Drives tab. For example, if the path setting has executable files on a “c:\windows\Winapps\” path, running an application with the path “c:\windows\Winapps\test.exe” could be done by typing from a terminal window  wine test.exe However, to run “c:\myapps\test.exe, it would be necessary to use the command:  wine c:\\myapps\\test.exe