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Installing Windows Programs in Linux
Although there are equivalents for almost all windows applications there may be some cases you want to use a real windows app. The advantages of using open source equivalents are numerous. Open source software is free, you are free to modify the program code as long as you follow the license (which if it is gpl, which most are, just means if you redistribute your modifications they must also be gpl. gpl- general public license), and programs written for Linux will generally operate better than programs made for windows running in Linux.
There are several programs which provide a compatibility layer that will allow you to run Windows applications in Linux. Most people who run Windows programs in Linux are either programmers or gamers. A programmer may need to have the ability to run Windows programs to test their work and unfortunately there are not very many modern commercial games which support Linux. Cedega is one option, geared towards gaming, which allows gamers to play Windows games in Linux. Cedega does require you subscribe and there is likely a fee. Wine is a free program that will allow a Linux to run Windows programs. Wine stands for - wine is not an emulator, it does not emulate windows. Wine basically translates the Windows API so that it can be understood by Linux, .... a compatibility layer.
Installing Windows applications in Wine is not always easy but it does work. Wine is available in the package managers of most Linux distributions. Wine-Doors is a very useful application that takes alot of the work out of installing programs in Wine. To install Wine-Doors you need to have Python development packages installed. Once installed it acts like a package manager for Wine, you get a list of Windows applications that can be selected and will automatically be downloaded and installed. One of the applications available in Wine-Doors is directx 9 which is very important if you want to play Windows games. Winetricks is a script much like Wine-Doors. It has no conventional gui but if you invoke the script in this manner; "sh winetricks", you get a list of runtime libraries and other useful things to choose from. winetricks does not provide regular applications but you could describe them as dependencies for applications. Visual C, dotnetfx, directx and many other useful things are available through winetricks.
In order to run dx9 you need to have good video drivers installed. Meaning either a Nvidia, ATI or possibly a good intel chip. The only reason intel may work is because they have released the appropriate information on their chips to allow fully functional drivers. If you have a Nvidia or an ATI card you must have their proprietary drivers installed. Some distributions make binary versions of these drivers available in special repositories, otherwise both Nvidia and ATI provide packages that will compile their drivers and install them for you. To compile the drivers you will need the source development packages(source code) for the kernel you are running. To identify what kernel you are running type uname -r at the command prompt. Nvidia and ATI also provide instructions with their driver packages.
See our links section for links to ATI, Nvidia, Wine, winetricks and Wine-Doors