What is the Linux's W.I.N.E program?

A Windows-based program requires services from the Windows operating system. It gets that support by calling Windows DLL files -- either ones supplied by Microsoft or files supplied by vendors.

WINE, which stands for "WINE Is Not an Emulator" is a compatibility layer for Unix (not just Linux) that provides those same services.

The WINE project has been all about reverse-engineering the DLLs and providing the functions provided by the Windows DLLs. The basic functionality is there but many of the functions are simply stubs. Although many programs work with the basic WINE functionality, WINE can take advantage of the actual Windows DLLs, if you have a Windows installation on the same computer, to provide even greater compatibility.

Since WINE is trying to reverse-engineer a moving target, it has success to varying degrees. You can go to http://www.winehq.com to query the apps database to see if the applications you wish to play with are supported and if so, what issues are involved with their installation.

I use WINE to run Lotus Notes on my workstation, but when I want to run a Windows program that aren't supported by WINE I turn to either Win4Lin, which can run a real Windows 95/98 operating system under Linux,or VMWare, which creates a virutal machine under Linux that can run 95->2000. Both of these solutions require more machine resources than a simple WINE installation does.