Wine Hits ‘Prime Time’

Moving to Linux from Windows doesn’t necessarily mean users need to leave
their Windows apps behind. With a bit of Wine, Linux users can
have their cake and eat it too.

Twelve years after the Wine project
began in 1993 as a way of running Windows (then Windows 3.1) applications on
Unix (now all Unix variants including Linux), Wine’s developers have upped
the application’s status from alpha to beta.

CodeWeavers, the lead sponsor of the Wine project, announced the beta version of Wine 0.9 yesterday along with its release of CrossOver Office 5.0, which uses Wine to enable Microsoft Office 2003 and other Windows apps to run on Linux.

Using mostly “Microsoft-free” code, Wine (Wine Is Not a [CPU] Emulator) lets users run Microsoft applications without the need for Windows. The beta release does not require
users to download DLLs from Microsoft, as Wine 0.9 claims to
include a full set of DLLs.

The company said support of Windows application
installers has also been improved, “making the likelihood high for a smooth
install of many Windows applications.”

According to its developers, the tools and libraries in
the 0.9 release, “are functionally complete and ready for commercial testing
and optimization.”

Though it has been in “alpha” status for more than a decade, Wine has
been included in nearly every major Linux distribution and is already a part
of commercial applications from CodeWeavers.

Alexandre Julliard, lead coordinator of the Wine project since 1994 and
CTO of CodeWeavers, declared the 0.9 release, “the beginning of prime time
for Wine.”

“Wine 0.9 is now a stable application with solid support for all Linux
kernels,” Julliard said in a statement. “While work remains to be done
before Wine can stand on its own, we are excited and encouraged by this
major milestone.”

The Wine milestone is directly related to a milestone release for CrossOver Office 5.0.

According to CodeWeavers, the CrossOver Office release supports the
installation and operation of many of the leading Windows-based applications,
including Microsoft Office 2003, Internet Explorer, Lotus Notes,
Intuit’s Quicken and QuickBooks, as well as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Adobe
Photoshop.

CrossOver Office 5.0 is built on Wine 0.9 with additional features to
further support Windows emulation on Linux machines. One of those features
is a virtualized container called “Bottles,” which allows for Windows
applications to run on separate virtual Windows platforms on Linux.

“CrossOver Office 5.0 is a major step forward for the Windows-to-Linux
movement,” said Jeremy White, chief executive officer of CodeWeavers, in a statement. “Its improved install capability alone makes it far easier for
Linux desktop users to operate independently in a Windows-dominant world.”

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