Internet Explorer 8 on Linux with Wine

About Internet Explorer 8

Windows Internet Explorer 8 (abbreviated IE8) is the latest web browser developed by Microsoft in the long running Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available. It is the successor to Internet Explorer 7, released in 2006, and is the default browser for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems except in Europe. IE8's global market share is estimated to be about 18-20%.

According to Microsoft, security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, Cascading Style Sheets, and Ajax support were its priorities for Internet Explorer 8.

Standards mode

Internet Explorer 8's main rendering mode, known as standards mode, has improved support for various web standards, especially CSS, compared to Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions.

The web standards supported by IE8 include the following:

• HTML, including the HTML object fallback and the abbr and elements
• Data: URIs
• CSS level 1 is fully supported. CSS level 2 is mostly supported however the CSS level 2 implementation does diverge from the CSS2 specification on over 50 counts. CSS level 3 is partially supported.
• DOM storage
• Partial HTML 5 support, including cross-document messaging
• Selectors APIs
• DOM, that brings it in line with implementations in other browsers. Attributes and properties in DOM objects are now handled differently, and the behavior of the getAttribute, setAttribute and removeAttribute modifiers have been changed to match the behavior of other browsers.
• Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) specification for enhanced accessibility in Ajax-based rich Internet applications.

However, IE8 does not support some other W3C standards.

Wine configuration

This is with a clean configuration directory, with no other applications or games installed.

Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Windows version emulated: XP
Wine version tested: 1.1.32

" browseui="native, builtin"
"crypt32"="native, builtin"
"gdiplus"="native"
"hhctrl.ocx"="native, builtin"
"hlink"="native, builtin"
"iernonce"="native, builtin"
"iexplore.exe"="native, builtin"
"itircl"="native, builtin"
"itss"="native, builtin"
"jscript"="native, builtin"
"mlang"="native, builtin"
"mshtml"="native, builtin"
"msimtf"="native,builtin"
"msxml3"="native,builtin"
"riched20"="native,builtin"
"riched32"="native,builtin"
"secur32"="native, builtin"
"shdoclc"="native, builtin"
"shdocvw"="native, builtin"
"shlwapi"="native, builtin"
"url"="native, builtin"
"urlmon"="native, builtin"
"usp10"="native, builtin"
"uxtheme"="native,builtin"
"wininet"="builtin"
"wintrust"="native, builtin"
"xmllite"="native, builtin"

DLL Overrides can be set in winecfg, just run winecfg from your favorite terminal and then go to Libraries and set the above DLL's as shown above.


You will also need to copy a number of DLL's from a Windows XP machine and place them in /system32 as winetricks doesn't provide these DLL's at this time.

msctf.dll
msimtf.dll
uxtheme.dll

Winetricks

Now download winetricks if you don't already have it and install the following Windows redistributables.

corefonts
gdiplus
msls31
msxml3
riched20
riched32
tahoma

IE 8 install in Wine

Download Windows Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP from Microsoft and save it to your home directory.

Now open a terminal and run $ wine IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe

The IE 8 install should now start, I didnt select the Windows security updates in my install.

IE 8 on Wine Screen Shots

Here's a few Screen Shots of IE 8 running on my Ubuntu 8.04 laptop.

Wine-Review.net rendered with Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 Internet options

Google search and about Internet Explorer 8

Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools

Conclusion and known problems

While IE 8 will run and render web pages just fine there is still a large number of problems/bugs that remain to be resolved before you will want to use the browser on Linux on a daily basis.

Bookmarks and RSS feeds don't currently work and their is a number of problems related to comctl32.dll for example the forward and backward buttons background isn't painted and even worse if you select Help the browser will lock up. I also had a number of lock ups when trying to save Internet options.

Their are also major problems with comdlg32.dll the address and search bars don't accept input at this time, so what ive done is set Google as my homepage and then go from there.

You can easily do this in the user.reg file, just change the start page to what you want your home page to be. Here is what I have as a example :

[Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main]
"Start Page"="http://www.google.com/ncr"

You can however view web pages, and navigate around a site to see how well it renders with IE 8 if your a web developer.

One way to help support further development of Internet Explorer is to purchase CrossOver Office and then vote for IE 8 as the app that you would most like to see supported in a future release.

Putty for Mac

$15.00

uTorrent 2.0.0 on Linux with Wine

µTorrent, the BitTorrent client that is..

Micro-Sized Yet Feature Filled

Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in µTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading and Mainline DHT (compatible with BitComet). Additionally, µTorrent supports the Protocol Encryption joint specification (compatible with Azureus 2.4.0.0 and above, BitComet 0.63 and above) and peer exchange.

Resource-Friendly

µTorrent was written with efficiency in mind. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources - typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all. Additionally, the program itself is contained within a single executable less than 220 KB in size.

Skinnable and Localized

Various icon, toolbar graphic and status icon replacements are available, and creating your own is very simple. µTorrent also has support for localization, and with a language file present, will automatically switch to your system language. If your language isn't available, you can easily add your own, or edit other existing translations to improve them!

Actively Developed and Improved

The developer puts in a lot of time working on features and making things more user-friendly. Releases only come out when they're ready, with no schedule pressures, so the few bugs that appear are quickly addressed and fixed.

Wine configuration
Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Wine Version: 1.1.32
Windows version emulated: XP

Installing µTorrent

Download µTorrent 2.0.0 Beta 17127 from here.

uTorrent first run

uTorrent 2.0.0 Beta runs out of the box with Wine 1.1.32 so no need for dll overrides and hacks.

tom@tom-laptop:~$ wine utorrent-2.0-beta-17127.upx.exe

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.

RealPlayer SP 1.0.2 on Linux with Wine

RealPlayer has always enabled you to play RealAudio (*.ra) and RealMedia (*.ram) files.
Now, with RealPlayer, you can:

• Download videos from thousands of Web sites with just one click
• Build your own video library and playlists
• Play all major audio and video formats

RealPlayer for personal use includes audio CD burning capabilities, DVR-style playback buffering, multimedia search, Internet radio, a jukebox-style file library, an embedded web browser (using Microsoft Internet Explorer), and the ability to transfer media to a number of portable devices, including Apple's iPod, MP3 players, and Windows Media devices.
Since version 11, RealPlayer also includes Flash Video support, DVD, SVCD, VCD burning and video recording.

Wine configuration
Linux Distribution: Ubuntu 8.04
Wine Version: 1.1.32
Windows version emulated: XP

Installing RealPlayer SP 1.0.2

Download RealPlayer SP 1.0.2 from here.

RealPlayer should install without any problems, just open your favorite terminal and run :

$ wine RealPlayerSPGold.exe

After the install you will want to install some native windows dlls and the flash plugin. The easiest way to do this is with winetricks, if you don't already have a current release of winetricks just go to the archive section of this site and select winetricks.

Select the following software in winetricks to install : Microsoft core fonts, tomaha font, richedit 20 and 32, flash plugin & ie6
After all the above software is installed cd to the install directory and run realplay.exe

$ cd /home/tom/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Real/RealPlayer
now run realplay.exe
$ wine realplay.exe

RealPlayer SP playing a mp3 file

RealPlayer SP Radio

RealPlayer Movies/TV
District 9 movie trailer

What works :

• Audio : All of the audio files I tried played without any problems.
• Radio : works reasonably good, each time you select a station select open in the dialog box.
• Movies/TV : about 75% of the movie trailers I tested worked with any problem.

What doesn't :

• Selecting Station, Genre etc... caused the player to lock up on me, narrowing the available selections works fine with the search option.
• Some of the movie trailers wouldn't play, the player screen remained black but the audio played just fine..Maybe this can be worked around with a codec change or video setting change.
• I didn't test DVD, VCD or burning so im not sure how well these features work at this time.

Run Microsoft Windows Applications and Games on Mac, Linux or ChromeOS save up to 20% off  CodeWeavers CrossOver+ today.