Despite the abundance of applications for Linux that cover almost all the needs of an average user, sometimes it may be necessary to install a Windows application. How to be in this case? Install a virtual machine or install Windows a second system?
No, such costly and inconvenient to use methods can be avoided. The installation of Wine, which is a kind of interpreter of the Windows API under Linux systems, will help you. This means that it is theoretically possible to launch even gluttonous applications without drastically slowing them down. In theory…
So, let's proceed to the installation. We launch the terminal from the root user. Since we are talking about Ubuntu, for this we need to drive the command “sudo –i” into the terminal, and when the system asks for your password (which you created when installing the system), you will need to enter it as well. After putting the terminal into user mode, enter the command “sudo apt-get install wine1.X ttf-symbol-replacement-wine1.X” (where instead of X we substitute the number of the current or the version you need). So, today the installation of Wine Ubuntu will go after a command of this kind: "sudo apt-get install wine1.5 ttf-symbol-replacement-wine1.5".
However, you can do it easier. The fact is that there is an “Application Center” in Ubuntu. Having entered it, you just need to write “Wine” in the search bar and then install the application found by the system. But such an installation of Wine is fraught with the fact that you will install far from the latest and most current version, but what was fresh at the time the system itself was released. So it’s better to do it manually using the above method.
However, there are subtleties here. The fact is that Wine alone will not be enough for you to install many Windows applications. You need to additionally install Winetricks, the installation of which is performed after the command "wget http://winetricks.org/winetricks".
Unfortunately, even Wine is not a panacea. Installing programs with it often does not solve all the problems. Do not hope that you will make some rare and specific application work that only works under a specific version of Windows. Before installing any game or program, you need to familiarize yourself with the rating, which will be available to you after installing Vine. There are three types of programs: platinum, gold and silver. They are sorted by ease of launch. So, platinum programs and games can be installed and launched with amazing ease, no different in this respect from the native Windows applications .
Accordingly, gold and silver programs need additional tuning. Its complexity can be different: in some cases you only need to install several files from the Windows libraries, while in others you can’t do without solving the “puzzles”. However, not only the installation of Wine can help you play your favorite game under Ubuntu.
The Valve project recently launched with their Steam under Ubuntu. The native client will allow you to run a large number of wonderful games without resorting to other tricks. However, the difficulty lies in the fact that so far not all games and programs have been ported to the Linux platform. So installing Wine in some cases remains the last way to get the application you need to work under Ubuntu.