Wine, which stands for Windows Emulator, is a Linux program that lets you run Windows software on Linux machines. It lets you run .exe files like you do on Windows itself. This is especially helpful when a particular program is not available for Linux but available for Windows. Wine can even run Games for Windows in Linux.

To install Wine on Ubuntu and Debian, run:

sudo apt install wine

Note: For older Ubuntu versions (version 14.04 and below), you need to use apt-get instead of apt.

To install Wine on CentOS and Fedora, run:

yum install wine

Installing a Windows Software using Wine

Now let’s try to install and run a Windows software, Internet Download Manager (IDM), on Linux using Wine. We’re installing IDM for illustration purpose only, you could choose to install any Windows program of your choice.

Download the .exe file of the Windows program you wish to install on your Linux machine. If you’re here for only testing Wine, download IDM from here.

After downloading a .exe program, open Terminal on your Linux machine and run the command below.

wine ./idman636build3.exe
# Replace the .exe filename with the name of the program file you downloaded.

As we can see, a dialog box similar to a Windows Installer dialog box is shown. We will now press Next and continue/finish the installation. Make sure you check Create Shortcut on Desktop in after clicking the Next button..

The program is by default installed in .wine folder in the user’s home directory.

To run the program that you just installed (IDM, in this case), run the following command in Terminal. You could also launch the program from the shortcut created in the user’s desktop folder.

wine IDMan.exe
# Replace IDMan.exe with the filename of your program's executable file.
IDM Windows program running in Linux using Wine

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