Running Windows programs under Linux. Wine - Windows emulator for Linux - Installation and configuration

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The abbreviation "Wine" is a recursive acronym for "Wine Is Not an Emulator". The name implies that it is not an emulator in the broadest sense of the word: it does not emulate work, does not require windows to be installed. Not related to VMware and the like.

At the same time, wine is a set of libraries that replace the standard Windows functions with winAPI. This allows you to run windows applications under Unix-like systems.

Windows does not need to be installed for wine to work, but its separate libraries may be needed.

Installation:
1. Maybe wine is already installed?
You can check it like this:

cd /usr/ports/emulators/wine/
make install clean

2. We install if we haven’t stood before.

cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/webfonts/
make install clean

./configure
make depend
make
make install

You can always download the new version from http://www.winehq.com/

I want to make a reservation right away, before installation, video drivers (with OpenGL support) must be installed, and fonts with Russian support must be present.
If the fonts and locale are correctly configured, then there should be no problems with the output of Russian characters.

Setting.
So let's get started.
1. First, just do

after launching the latter in the window, select the sound tab and press autodetect (***).
The config settings file should now appear in the %HOME%/.wine directory.
We will edit it.

2. Let's open it and look at the section. Perhaps the most important section. The correct display of the font depends on its setting, and if it is not configured, then many applications may simply not start.
We write something like this:

;; default TrueType fonts with russian koi8-r encoding
"Default" = "-monotype-arial-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
"DefaultFixed" = "-monotype-courier new-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
"DefaultSerif" = "-monotype-times new roman-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"
"DefaultSansSerif" = "-monotype-arial-*-*-*--*-*-*-*-*-*-koi8-r"

If you have Russian fonts installed, then you just need to replace monotype in the above example with webfonts or cyrillic, or your others. After that, I uncommented the line accordingly and set the desired path for the font.

;"dir1" = "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType"
(and, for example, write webfonts instead of TrueType)

If ttf fonts are not installed, then most likely you have cronix fonts, then Russification will look like this:

;"Default" = "-cronyx-helvetica-"
;"DefaultFixed" = "fixed"
;"DefaultSerif" = "-cronyx-times-"
;"DefaultSansSerif" = "-cronyx-helvetica-"

.....................
"Path" = "%HOME%/.wine/c"
"Type" = "hd"
"Label" = "MS-DOS"
"Filesystem" = "win95"
........................

You can see where the directory with the virtual disk is located.
We find the section with sound.

...
"Drivers" = "wineoss.drv" ; default for most common configurations
;"Drivers" = "winearts.drv" ; for KDE
;"Drivers" = "winealsa.drv" ; for ALSA users
.............

Usually, everything works with the first one, but if after (***) it was determined differently, then you can change it here. Problems can arise if multithreading is not configured and another sound application is blocking wine.

; Windows version to imitate (win95,win98,winme,nt351,nt40,win2k,winxp,win20,win30,win31)
"Windows" = "winxp"

Specify the value of the Temp variable:

...
"Temp" = "C:\\Temp"
...

Another important section:

"commdlg" = "builtin, native"
"comdlg32" = "builtin, native"
"ver" = "builtin, native"

It contains libraries that wine will use when emulating. Most of them are converted to *nux, but you can, with caution, in order to avoid conflict, add your own.
It is done like this:
add a line

"C:\\windows\\system32\\mfc42.dll" = "native, builtin"

and copy mfc42.dll to %HOME%/.wine/windows/system32/

How to run something?

To do this, just go to the folder with the win application and run $wine prog.exe and that's it.
All installation and tuning was done for version 20050310 (ports freeBsd 5.4). The settings of the latest versions may differ slightly.

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Use can be dictated by a lot of reasons - from the banal habit of some programs to the inability to start a separate machine with Linux. Someone wants to use native versions of the software for debugging, and someone hopes that in this way they can force users to smoothly migrate to a full-fledged distribution.

Programs for Linux - there is everything

Before you fuss with emulators, it's better to look for ported versions or analogues of your favorite programs. The same, and many other utilities have native assemblies not only for Windows, but also for To get some specific functionality, a full-fledged analogue of software from Linux is often not required. For example, you get used to auto-completion for Tab in the shell very quickly, but this is not even mentioned in the Windows command line. The clink utility will help fix this and other annoying omissions.

Standard console utilities, such as those from the GNU Coreutils package, have long been ported to Windows. There are quite old GNUWin II and UnxUtils suites, as well as constantly updated UWIN and Gnuwin32. For the latter, upon completion of the installation of the basic installer, you must sequentially run the download.bat and install.bat files, and then copy the gnuwin32 folder to any convenient location and run the update-links.bat file from it. After the last script has been processed, the StartMenu subdirectory will contain links to launching the command line with the GNU environment and documentation for the utilities.

Microsoft Windows for UNIX

Owners of the maximum and corporate versions, as well as server versions of the Microsoft OS, may not bother at all. Subsystem for UNIX-based applications or Microsoft Windows services for UNIX are available for them. This set of basic utilities is present directly in the system components. Finally, last on the list and the first most popular solution for running UNIX programs is . This package is easy to install and contains a far from small set of applications ported to Windows. It is recommended to use it.

KDE on Windows

Now we can talk about the strange - running a non-native Windows system. In fact, the KDE on Windows project has been around for years, and at first it was simply impossible to use it due to regular crashes, which, perhaps, did not drive the unfortunate system into a BSOD. However, the developers did not sit idly by, and in the current reincarnation of the project, it can be safely installed - errors are quite rare, and even those are not critical. It probably doesn’t make sense to put everything at once, but some applications may appeal to you.

Linux in a virtual machine

Unfortunately, ported applications do not always behave as they do in their native environment, or they may conflict with other programs. Therefore, the only way out, in addition to installing the penguin OS on bare metal, is to emulate Linux. For one-time use, you can use a shell for QEMU called MobaLiveCD, which, without unnecessary gestures, will help you launch LiveCD / USB with various distributions. For permanent use, it is better to install Linux in a virtual machine: in or VMWare Player. Just don't forget to install the Guest Additions for a more comfortable experience. An alternative is the use of VDI solutions with the ability to seamlessly integrate into Windows Linux applications running on a separate host, which can also be virtualized.

coLinux emulator

The best option for running Linux applications is to use . It, relatively speaking, runs the Linux kernel at the level of the Windows kernel and has access to all the hardware resources of the machine, due to which there are practically no performance losses. At the same time, it retains full compatibility with Linux applications, allowing you to directly run them. Based on coLinux, there are ready-made systems for quickly running Portable Ubuntu Remix, Topologilinux, SpeedLinux and andLinux. The only annoying limitation of coLinux and all packages based on it is the need to use the 32-bit version of Windows 2k/XP/2k3/Vista/7. As an example, let's take a look at the minimum setting. First of all, we will install the latest version of coLinux, refusing to download ready-made images and installing WinPcap along the way.

Installing coLinux on Windows

Now you need to download the Debian disk image archive and unzip it to the folder where coLinux was installed. The size of the rootfs_2gb.img disk can be increased if desired. The squeeze.conf file will have to be edited a bit. The minimum changes are to increase the amount of allocated RAM, allow access to the C: drive via COFS and add a TAP network interface. Please note that when using COFS, it is better not to access the same files with folders from Linux and Windows at the same time.

Kernel=vmlinux cobd0="rootfs_2gb.img" cobd1="swap_128mb.img" root=/dev/cobd0 ro cofs0="C:\" initrd=initrd.gz mem=512 eth0=slirp eth1=tuntap

After running squeeze.bat, you will be taken to the Debian console. The default login is root and there is no password. Using nano, we will edit the network interface parameters in the /etc/network/interfaces. Let's add a section for eth1. We use any IP address as long as there is no intersection with other local subnets. In Windows, in the IPv4 settings of the TAP-Win32 Adapter V8 network adapter, you must specify an address from the same subnet.

Auto eth1 iface eth1 inet static address 192.168.100.2 netmask 255.255.255.0

Exit nano with saving changes - F2, Y, Enter. Now let's create a folder where the C: drive will be mounted ...

Mkdir /mnt/windrvc

... add one line to the end of the /etc/fstab file and save it:

/dev/cofs0 /mnt/windrvc cofs defaults 0 0

Now we are going to install the X server, but for now, for simplicity, we will write the export of the DISPLAY variable to the ~/.profile file. For the IP address, use the one specified for the TAP adapter in Windows. After that, you can reboot with the reboot command.

Export DISPLAY=192.168.100.1:0

It would be useful to install, including Cyrillic ones. You can optionally traverse the font directories, including C:\Windows\Fonts, with the Cygwin mkfontdir and mkfontscale utilities. You are now ready to install the Xming X server. Immediately after this procedure, we add the IP address of the TAP interface in Debian to the X0.hosts file.

Let's thank Windows for being vigilant and in the standard firewall we will change all the rules regarding Xming from forbidding to allowing, otherwise programs simply will not reach the X server. Now we launch the XLaunch utility, in which you can select the X-window display mode and set additional parameters. It is important for us to set up support for Russian and English layouts with Alt + Shift switching and optionally set DPI. At the end, the settings file must be saved as the name.xlaunch. In the future, by double-clicking on this file, the X-server will be launched with the parameters we specified.

Xkblayout us,ru -xkbvariant basic,winkeys -xkboptions grp:alt_shift_toggle –dpi 96

In order not to be so boring, let's install the graphical package manager synaptic for a more convenient installation of software and some lightweight panel with an application menu, for example lxpanel. For simplicity, we will write the last one into autorun at login by adding the lxpanel& command to the end of ~/.profile.

apt-get update apt-get upgrade apt-get install synaptic lxpanel

To complete the picture, let's add sound support. Download the archive with Pulseadio from here and unpack it into some directory, in which we create a default.pa text file. Fill this file with the following lines. Here 192.168.100.0/24 is our TAP subnet.

load-module module-native-protocol-tcp auth-ip-acl=127.0.0.1;192.168.100.0/24 load-module module-detect add-autoload-sink output module-waveout sink_name=output set-default-sink output

We launch pulseaudio.exe and once again we go to edit permissions in the Windows firewall. In the Debian console, install the necessary utilities and libraries.

apt-get install libpulse0 libasound2-plugins alsa-utils

In the file /etc/pulse/client.conf we add the IP address of the host machine running the Pulseaudio server - default-server = 192.168.100.1, and in /etc/asound.conf the following parameters:

pcm.!default (type pulse) ctl.!default (type pulse) pcm.pulse (type pulse) ctl.pulse (type pulse)

To check the performance, you can try to play one of the test files.

Aplay /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav

Starting Pulseaudio automatically on Debian startup is done by adding the following command to the end of the squeeze.conf configuration file.

Exec0="X:\path\to\folder\pulseaudio\pulseaudio.exe"

Xorg on Windows

For the X server, this trick is not suitable. In principle, what has already been done is enough to get the job done. However, it would be nice to add a new non-root user to Linux, set up autologin for him with mingetty, install coLinux as a Windows service, and set Xming to autostart. For convenience, you can install the Desktops utility, which creates several virtual desktops in Windows, and run the X server in full screen mode on a second desktop.

As a result, we got a fast environment for running Linux applications almost natively on Windows. It can be used for writing and debugging web applications, cross-compiling drivers, and other tasks. But there is still no sane graphics acceleration for heavy applications, and the 64-bit version began to be developed just a few months ago. Nevertheless, coLinux is quite suitable for everyday use. For further study of the possibilities and settings of this system, please refer to the project wiki. Well, for now, we will close the topic of the symbiotic relationship between Windows and Linux through various places. Good luck!

Computer games are popular with everyone and every PC user. But did you know that operating systems, which seem to be completely different, can play the same games. How? Easy peasy! To do this, you need to follow a few simple steps.

Those who are perfectly familiar with the programming language, of course, know what it is, but still, a few words about what Wine is and what it is for.

First of all, it must be said that Wine is software that allows you to run a Windows game on Linux. The only negative here is the need to register a couple of settings.

Installation methods

Everyone who uses Linux as their main operating system knows very well that there are several options for doing the same process here. The most common way to install Wine is through the "Program Manager". So:

- open the Program Manager;
- we prescribe in the search line Wine;
- from the options that appear, select just Wine without additional characters;
- - click Install.

What you need to know about Wine settings?

It should be said right away that Wine settings are not always obtained for the first time. But there is no need to worry here. The Linux OS is good because here everything can always be returned to its original position at any time. The easiest way, used, well, in the most extreme cases, is to completely remove the program, download it again, and install it. But, the main thing is not to rush. If in Windows all installations take place basically in the “default” mode, then you need to read carefully here. But there is a big plus. If you can install and configure Wine yourself, then you will remember this process “for life”.

Installing Wine

There is one, but an important nuance. If you have a 64-bit distribution, then Wine will be installed accordingly, and we do not need this. Therefore, in the terminal we write the command: WINEARCH=win32 winecf. The program options open, move them to the background and do not touch for now. If Linux is 32-bit, then this step is skipped.
After that, download and install Winetricks. With its help, Wine settings are registered. Having launched Winetricks, the first thing we do is select Select the default wineprefix in the first window and OK. The list of fonts for Wine immediately opens. We do not think for a long time, we choose everything.

DLL Settings

This item is categorized as "important". Open Install a Windows DLL or component, install each component separately. Those that give an error are simply skipped.

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This article will guide you on how to install Wine on Ubuntu 18.04.

The Wine package is in the official Ubuntu 18.04 repository (called wine-stable). And installing it is as easy as any package from the repository, for example in the terminal - " sudo apt-get install wine-stable". However, the package that is included in the official repository has a bug.

As a result of this error, Wine is "not visible" on the system after installation. The program is not associated with Windows program files (exe). Wine is "not visible" in the applications menu. And Windows programs installed under Wine are not visible in the application menu either. As a result, the launch of program installers under Wine must be done manually, in the terminal, for example like this - " wine ~/temp/FSViewerSetup55.exe". And after installing the program, you need to manually create a launch file for it (desktop file).

This is all inconvenient, not to mention the fact that not everyone can do it. Of course, this can be overcome, especially since Wine itself works, but it is easier to install from the WineHQ repository (the official repository of the program developers).

The first step is to uninstall Wine if it was installed from the Ubuntu 18.04 repository.

sudo apt-get purge wine-stable

Then install from the WineHQ repository:

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

wget -nc https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/Release.key

sudo apt-key add Release.key

sudo add-apt-repository "deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ artful main"

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-stable

Note. The installation is performed from the repository for version 17.10, but this package also works on version 18.04.

After installation, you need to run the Wine configurator - winecfg.

The configurator, after launch, should issue a request to download and install two additional packages - wine-mono and wine-gecko. However, these packages can be installed independently, before running winecfg.

Installation and basic setup of Wine for games in Linux: features and recommendations

By the way, when installing Wine from the official Ubuntu 18.04 repository, winecfg does not download or install the wine-mono and wine-gecko packages.

After that, Wine will be associated with Windows program files - it will be possible to run them through the context menu (right mouse button).

Also in the application menu there will be a menu item Wine, which will have shortcuts for launching installed Windows programs.

However, for each installed Windows program, you will have to manually edit its desktop file. The current stable version of Wine (3.0.1) uses a new startup string format. And there is an error in the launch line that causes the program to not start.

It is necessary, in the desktop file, to replace the launch line with the old format.

The new format string looks like this:

Exec=env WINEPREFIX="/home/user/.wine" wine C:\\\\windows\\\\command\\\\start.exe /Unix /home/user/.wine/dosdevices/c:/ProgramData /Microsoft/Windows/Start\\ Menu/Programs/FastStone\\ Image\\ Viewer/FastStone\\ Image\\ Viewer.lnk

You need to change it to this format:

Exec= env WINEPREFIX="~/.wine" wine "~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/FastStone Image Viewer/FSViewer.exe"

That is, in the new format, the launch is performed through a call start.exe with a parameter that specifies a Windows shortcut of type. But in this scheme, something does not work.

And the old format (wine + path to the Windows program) works.

Shortcuts (desktop files) of programs installed by Windows are located in the " ~/.local/share/applications/wine/Programs". In addition, desktop files of installed Windows programs can be copied to the Desktop, if in the settings winecfg, The Windows desktop is linked to the Ubuntu Desktop folder - these desktop files also need to be edited.

Ivan Sukhov, 2018

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Linux, Wine, q4wine, installing and working with Windows programs

Introduction

Everyone knows that under Linux you can run programs written for Windows. And there are several such ways. For example, you can emulate a computer, as QEMU, VMware or VirtualBox do. However, the most convenient way to run such programs is, of course, Wine. But just using Wine is not always convenient, many devices have been created to facilitate the configuration and launch of programs, one of them is q4wine.

Wine is such an intermediate layer between the program and the OS. This layer emulates the Windows API for a program and translates calls to that API into Linux/X11 OS calls. For a long time, Wine did not work very well. The API was not fully covered, and there were enough glitches. But, recently, the project has reached a state in which it is quite possible to use it.

Problems and ways to solve them

However, despite all the successes, there are still many problems and inconveniences when using Wine. We list:

In theory, Wine itself is enough to run the simplest programs. However, many programs require other Windows components (such as fonts, libraries, for example). These components must be installed separately, and doing it "by hand" is often very inconvenient.
Different programs may require different components and different Windows settings, often incompatible with each other.
It is desirable to have a tool for integrating installed Windows programs into a Linux desktop environment.

The listed problems are designed to solve scripts and programs that allow you to manage the Wine configuration and / or create several configurations, in the limit, you can create your own configuration for each program.

These programs include:

Working with Wine

Launching programs

Programs run very simply, suppose we have a program for Windows, progr.exe that we want to run. We type in the console:

Wine starts up and runs our program. But such programs, in the form of one .exe files are rare. Usually the program needs to be installed. In this case, we take the installation file for the program and run it:

Then everything is as usual for such programs, we answer questions, press the buttons Next and so on. When the script completes, the program will be installed. By default, the program will be installed in the hierarchy ~/.wine

How to run the program? Well, you can find where the program was installed and run it, as described above, with the command wineprogr.exe You can bungle a small script to run it and run the program from this script. I usually make a script. Something like this:

WINEPREFIX

By default, Wine stores all files and settings in the directory ~.wine Sometimes it is convenient or necessary to have several such directories with different settings.

In order to tell Wine in which directory the settings and software files are located, use the environment variable WINEPREFIX It is convenient to use it in scripts to run Windows programs. Script example:

q4wine

To make my work easier, I personally chose q4wine among other shells.

Compilation and installation

You can download q4wine from here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/q4wine/

Installed simply:

As a package manager for software built from source, I use xstow. Lines after sudo make install, refer to working with this manager. The directory for installation is also selected based on this.

Configuration

We launch:

Go to tab Prefixes and run Create a new prefix

At least two parameters must be set:

Path to prefix: Path to a directory where the directory with Wine settings, virtual disks, and so on will be contained.
Name: the name under which this prefix will appear in q4wine.

Now select the prefix we created and press the button on the toolbar: Setup prefix fake drive and applications

The disk creation wizard will start. In principle, the settings can be left default.

Now you can bookmark Programs. There, in the system directory, there are icons of system programs that can already be launched.

Installing programs

Go to bookmark Prefixes.
21.5. Running games with the wine emulator

Select the desired prefix.
Go to bookmark Programs. In the browser window, right-click, select New and create a folder for our programs.
Select this folder, right click, select New and create an icon to launch the program.

Conclusion

Orthodox will say that Wine is not needed, that all tasks can be performed directly from under Linux. It's true. But sometimes, for example, you need to develop cross-platform software. This is where Wine comes in handy. Although in some cases you can not do without an emulator, such as VirtualBox.

Comments:

Comment:

How I made friends with PlayOnLinux.

At one time, he described his script, which helps to launch and manage the game in his WINE prefix. With its merits, simplicity and clarity, such a simple, if not clumsy, solution suited me perfectly, but over time, cons were discovered.

Firstly, with all the convenience of using scripts for me, there are people around me who are close to me, whom it is better not to dedicate to the wilds of launching Windows games from the console. Forming shortcuts to games for them on the Desktop is simply dreary and broke.

Secondly, when using “just WINE”, a situation can really arise when yesterday the game started normally in WINE 1.5, and tomorrow it crashes in WINE 1.6. You always have an up-to-date, but one version of WINE in your system, it would be great for me to install the game and not experience problems with it in the future.

All this forced me to try graphical utilities that hide work with WINE under their hood. For a long time I knew about PlayOnLinux and decided to make friends with it.

P.O.L.

The first undoubted advantage of PlayOnLinux is its advanced system of ready-made POL scripts that help to create a working environment in WINE.

A POL file is a script with calls to PlayOnLinux commands that set the required version of MS Windows, install the necessary libraries, and help bypass known problems with the game. Agree that it's just nice when once the author of a particular POL script solved all the problems and the instructions in the POL script automated and facilitated the painless installation of your favorite game. For example, in Syberia 1 a bug with a black screen, the author of the script went around after a pause of 10 seconds and calling the previously downloaded nircmd.exe, which hides the desired window. Until then, you don't always think of it. PO is great!

WINE prefix.

The second plus of PlayOnLinux is the active use of WINE prefixes. For each game and program, a separate prefix is created. In the future, you can easily change something in the environment settings of one program and not be afraid that this will negatively affect other applications.

For each WINE prefix, which represents a "separate version of MS Windows", different actions are available on it.

Commonly used things are collected in one place, such as launching the registry editor regedit.exe, cmd.exe command line, taskmgr.exe task manager in this prefix.

I really liked the "End Processes" feature, which helps kill all WINE processes if something goes wrong and WINE remains in memory. I've had to shamanize with killall wine before, but it's so hard to kill all WINE processes, since they have different names and do not fall under the same mask. That is, in one fell swoop of seven kills - it didn’t work for me in the console. Hemorrhoids are canceled and the “End Processes” button is just some kind of magic wand.

Later, a more experienced Linuxoid Dmitry Makhrovsky in the Ubuntu Linux VKontakte group suggested that you can kill all wine processes of a given prefix through wineserver -k. Live and learn.

In the "Install Packages" tab, you can find all those libraries that you previously had to install through winetricks. To be honest, I like working in the console with winetricks more. The fact is that PlayOnLinux hides, in the bad sense of the word, its actions for installing libraries, but I often had problems and the output of the “op-s-something went wrong” window does not suit me. It happened more than once that winetricks installs libraries on iron, and PlayOnLinux, for example, when installing dotnet35, it starts downloading 300 MB Service Pack 3 for MS Windows XP and a bunch of dependencies, and eventually ends with its own “wow”.

I don't like this "Install Packages" place, but thanks to POL scripts, it probably won't be needed very often.

The "Screen" tab allows you to set various parameters related to the video subsystem and rendering algorithms. Very comfortably.

The "Miscellaneous" tab hides the "Open Console" button, which is useful to me.

Installing and configuring wine on Debian/Ubuntu/Linux Mint

She then made friends with PlayOnLinux. Something can be done really faster in the console when installing and combing, which will kindly open in this prefix.

Various WINE.

What really makes PlayOnLinux cool is the ability to work with multiple WINEs. That is, the latest WINE is installed in the system on a regular basis and in PlayOnLinux it is called System, but by means of PlayOnLinux you can download an optimized version of WINE for a specific game. I am categorically against violating the philosophy of installing programs bypassing the regular manager and bypassing the repositories, BUT since PlayOnLinux downloads other versions of WINE to your account's home folder, this will not disrupt the system and is acceptable. One might even say that there is no other way.

I often missed this opportunity in pure WINE. My wife is now playing Zombie vs Plants and with the next WINE update, the game just started to crash stupidly at startup. PlayOnLinux is simply not replaceable in this regard. We set the version of WINE instead of System to the previous release or find, if it is, a vine tailored for this game and voila.

That is, you can, figuratively speaking, “freeze” the WINE version so that in the future there will be no problems with a long-standing and running application from the MS Windows world in PlayOnLinux.

PlayOnLinux plugins.

Pluses, which I did not use, can be considered the expansion of PlayOnLinux capabilities using the plugin system.

Minuses.

With all its merits, I can not say about the minuses.

First, what I don't like is the search and notifications about the new version of PlayOnLinux available. In my Linux system with package management, only one friend should do this - a full-time program installer. This ms windows style infuriates me when the program itself is going to be updated bypassing the system.

In this regard, for developers, PlayOnLinux should be an example of Firefox and VirtualBox, which in the Linux version of the update checkboxes in the programs themselves are unchecked. Considering that PlayOnLinux was created only for Linux, because it is stupidly not needed in Windows, it's just not clear why the developers added such functionality. What drove them?

Secondly, I will repeat the minus about the worst work on installing libraries. The winetricks script works more reliably and ironically. Pulling out 300 MB archives without warning by PlayOnLinux is not the case. And stupid opanki instead of informative output in the window are not encouraging.

Thirdly, a significant minus for me, I don’t know how to make a game on a separate Xorg in PlayOnLinux. With regular WINE it's easy. Allow another copy of Xorg to run - do allowed_users=anybody
Launching WINE in Style

This trick with the ears allows you to get rid of many problems, such as badly exiting the game and knocking down the screen resolution, or when in a dual-monitor system the mouse ran to another monitor instead of scrolling the map in StarCraft. Yes, and it's corny nice to get a not superfluous increase in fps.

I don't know yet how to elegantly sham a game on a separate Xorg in PlayOnLinux.

Native Linux games. Deadlock game in linux.

But I would like to end the article on a different note. WINE and all of its graphical incarnations are all good and kudos to the developers, BUT, thanks to Valve porting their Steam client to Linux and the Greenlight voting system, more and more games can be run without bothering with WINE.

My impression of Valve Steam Linux is getting better and better every day. Yesterday I saw 30 games for the Linux platform, today there are already 40. And this is only on Valve Steam.

Here's the hot news - the developers of the Deadlock game have received sufficient funding through crowdfunding and the release of the game with Linux support is expected in February. The game Deadlock uses the Unity3D engine, which in version 4.0 began to support Linux. That is, we should expect in the future, an increase in available games on the Unity 3D engine, if the game developers are not too lazy to transfer their offspring to version 4 of the engine.

You can already play the demo version of the game Deadlock in the Linux version.

Or just watch the Deadlock trailer and make up your mind about the game.

My final philosophical opinion is as follows: “New time begins in the world of Linux games. For the era of WINE for game, sunset dawns. Dawn is dawning for native Linux games."

The game engines Valve Source and Unity3D ported to the Linux platform will transfer the games they use to the Linux rails.

Valve's digital distribution clients Steam and Desura will deliver top games to our PC.

The possibilities of Linux are now wider than ever. With Steam offering more than a thousand games for Linux and the general trend towards web apps, there is less and less need for Windows. As a result, you will be able to watch videos from online cinemas in a Linux environment without any additional tricks and even run Microsoft Office applications here - at least their Internet versions.

But sooner or later there comes a moment when it becomes necessary to run some program for Windows on a PC running Linux. This can be done in several ways. And here's what you need to know.

Wine allows you to run Windows software in a Linux environment without requiring the installation of the Microsoft operating system itself. Wine is an open source "Windows-compatible software layer" designed to run Windows applications directly on a Linux PC. In essence, the participants in this open source project attempted to recreate from scratch a subset of the Windows environment that would be sufficient to run Windows applications without the presence of this OS itself.

This is the only method that does not require a copy of Windows. Its disadvantage is that not all applications work correctly. Errors or performance drops may occur, especially if you use Wine to run video games. But if we are talking about some popular game released several years ago, there are usually no complications. For example, many people use Wine to play World of Warcraft on Linux. You can get information about the operation of specific applications and the settings that need to be made for their normal functioning on the Wine Application Database website (appdb.winehq.org).

Wine version of PlayOnLinux running Ubuntu

First of all, download Wine from the repository of your Linux distribution. Then the files should be uploaded. exe of Windows applications and double-click to launch them in the Wine environment. Then you can try out a very convenient PlayOnLinux interface (playonlinux.com), which is installed on top of Wine and helps you install popular programs and games for Windows.

Codeweavers offers a commercial version of Wine - CrossOver Linux. You will have to pay for it, but Codeweavers promises official support for common applications (Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop and the most popular PC games) and guarantees their correct operation. Codeweavers also contributes to the development of the main Wine project.

Virtual machines

Virtual machines are a very convenient way to run Windows software on a Linux PC. As PC performance improves, virtual machines take up fewer and fewer resources from them.

In this case, a copy of Windows is installed in the "virtual machine" program VirtualBox (virtualbox.org), VMware, or KVM specially created for Linux (Kernel-based Virtual Machine, linux-kvm.org). A copy of Windows thinks it's running on real hardware, but it's actually running in a desktop window. Modern virtual machines even allow you to take Windows programs outside of this window, presenting them as ordinary windows on the Linux desktop.

VirtualBox on Ubuntu Linux

This solution is more reliable than Wine. By running Windows applications on a real copy of Windows, you avoid errors.

However, using a virtual machine requires a full copy of Windows and puts extra strain on the hardware because the copy of Windows runs alongside the main operating system. Resource-hungry games that need direct access to the video card are especially affected, in which case it is better to use Wine. As for Microsoft Office and Adobe Photoshop office applications, a virtual machine will be an excellent solution for them.

Dual boot systems

In fact, creating a dual-boot system is not a way to run Windows software in a Linux environment, but many Linux users run Windows programs that way. Instead of accessing them in a Linux environment, they reboot the computer, select Windows from the menu, and load the Microsoft operating system. Thus, Windows software functions in its native environment. Thanks to modern SSDs, the reboot process is faster than ever.

This option is especially good for those gamers who cannot completely move away from Windows. Not wanting to give up Windows games, they simply restart the computer when they want to return to their favorite game. And since Windows talks directly to the hardware, there are no performance or compatibility issues.

The best way to create a dual boot system is to install Windows first. If your computer came with the Microsoft operating system already pre-installed on it, this is quite enough. Next, install the Linux distribution of your choice. You can then select the desired operating system directly when you boot your PC.

In practice, the best choice depends on what you want to do. If you need to run a single application or game that works well with Wine, Wine is the perfect choice. If you need to use many different applications (for example, the latest versions of Office or Photoshop), it is better to give preference to a virtual machine. And for gamers who want to enjoy the latest Windows products, dual-boot systems will provide performance that is unlikely to be achieved with Wine.

Currently, there are 2 ways to run Windows applications in a Linux environment:

1) The mechanism for creating virtual machines. Such programs include, for example, VMWare and win4lin. For them to work, you must have Windows installed on your computer.
2) Run Windows programs as X Window applications. The most famous and legendary program of this kind is Wine(Wine Is Not an Emulator).

Actually, VMWare is a powerful virtual machine system. This program does not specialize in emulating specific operating systems - it simply emulates the computer itself, inside which another OS is launched. In short, a virtual computer is a special program that runs on Linux and simulates an Intel x86 physical computer. The monitor of the virtual computer is the window of the graphical shell X Window, in which information is displayed.
A virtual computer is "built" from the following set of virtual devices:
IDE and SCSI virtual hard disks, virtual CD-ROM drive;
standard floppy drive;
IDE hard disk controller Intel 82371 PCI Bus Master supporting two primary (primary) and two secondary (secondary) IDE disks;
SCSI disk adapter compatible with BusLogic BT-958;
standard PCI graphics adapter, standard 101/102-key keyboard, PS/2 compatible mouse;
AMD PCNET Family Ethernet adapter (PCI-ISA);
serial ports COM1-COM4, parallel ports LPT1-LPT2;
sound card compatible with Sound Blaster 16.
Naturally, two operating systems simultaneously running on one physical computer compete in one way or another for the real resources of the base computer, and therefore the requirements for it are quite high. In addition, VMWare is demanding on the version of the kernel and graphics libraries. You can read more about VMWare, for example, in this article.
The general conclusion is a large and clumsy program, but with great potential.

1.2) Win4Lin - http://www.netraverse.com .

This is also a virtual computer emulator, but it was created and optimized specifically for running Windows on Linux. Moreover, it uses not the usual, but the patched Linux kernel. Therefore, it is faster and more reliable than VMWare. In general, Win4Lin is by far the best of these programs! The emulation is almost 100%, and all known programs written for Windows run in the Linux window (The site lists such applications - MS Office, Intuit Quicken, Lotus SmartSuite, Adobe Photoshop, Intuit TurboTax, MS Internet Explorer, Palm Desktop, Netscape Navigator, Winamp , and much more). Also, a special function of the program is protection against failures (protection layer), thanks to which even if the application has fallen, it is easily restored without affecting the system's performance. The new version of Win4Lin 3.0 even has support for Microsoft networking. The only drawback is the lack of DirectX support, so you won't be able to play games. In general, everything goes very quickly compared to VMWare, and you even forget for a while that you are in Linux :).

Installation: First you need to download the installation file from http://www.netraverse.com/download . After that, setup itself determines the type of your kernel and offers to download the patched version of the kernel (Win4Lin-Improved Kernel). Read more about installing or using Win4Lin in English , or . There are also docks in Russian. (Addendum as of 01/24/02: There is another interesting article about installing Win4Lin - it is located here).

General conclusion - The best!!

2.1) WINE(Wine Is Not an Emulator) - http://www.winehq.org.

The most famous and legendary program for running Windows programs in OS Linux and the X Window environment. Indeed, Wine is not an emulator, but simply a program that attempts to reproduce the functionality of Windows. Unlike the two commercial (and very expensive) projects listed above, Wine is distributed as Open Source. (But there is also a commercial version called winex developed by Transgaming). The developers of Wine and WineX have already made some headway in running powerful Windows applications. (For example, modern games run fine under WineX 2.0). Wine doesn't create a virtual machine, but tries to run Windows applications into graphical Linux applications. Therefore, VMWare and Win4Lin require Windows to be installed on the computer, while Wine does not require Windows to be installed on the computer. (But various files taken from Windows are usually used - for example, DLLs).