How to use Windows software in Linux: With the release of Wine 8, the Windows replica for Linux has matured again and enables more Windows programs. In most cases, however, additional work is necessary to set up Windows programs.
Wine is not an emulator like Qemu or a virtualization environment like Virtualbox, but a runtime environment that aims to emulate the Windows API on Linux. This API mapping is not complete, but it is comprehensive enough for many Windows programs to run on the Linux desktop.
Wine began as a hobby project 30 years ago at the time of Windows 3.1 with its 16-bit API. After a simple “Hello World” program, it quickly succeeded in getting Solitaire to run. With Windows 95, Wine had to support the new 32-bit API and soon showed impressive partial success, so Corel invested in further development of Wine from 1999 to 2000 to use it for the then popular Wordperfect.
In the meantime, further development disintegrated into commercial branches, which scared off many open-source developers and hindered progress. Wine was revived by Google in 2006, because at that time Wine served as a compatibility layer for the Linux version of Picasa. Google thus saved itself a complete porting of Picasa to Linux.
