WINE WINdows Emulator FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about Wine, a program that allows UNIX workstation users to run MS Windows binaries. This should be read by anyone wishing to know more about the ongoing development of this programming project.

General Information

This is the FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) for the Wine development project. It contains both general and technical information about Wine: project status, what it is and what it does, how to obtain and configure and run it, and more. Please read this FAQ carefully before you post questions about Wine to Usenet to see if your question is already answered here first.

Note that this FAQ will no longer contain any references to the latest Wine release available at the time of the release of this version of the Wine FAQ. This is done now because of the longevity of this FAQ, which confuses some folks when trying to match a version of the FAQ with a version of the Wine release that they have obtained. You can always easily find out what the current version of Wine is by checking the ftp sites mentioned in question 4.1 below.

The Standard Disclaimer: Please note that since Wine is still alpha code, it may or may not work to varying degrees on your system. Also note that from release to release, programs may work and then not work, then work again. Neither the Wine developers nor the Wine FAQ author/maintainer can be held responsible for any damage that may be caused to your computer hardware, software or data by your obtaining, installing, configuring, operating and/or removing Wine. If you use Wine, you use it completely at your own risk.

The Wine FAQ is posted monthly to these newsgroups:

comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine comp.os.linux.answers comp.windows.x.i386unix comp.answers news.answers

(The Wine FAQ used to also be posted to:

comp.emulators.announce comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.announce comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.announce comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.announce

but I as have been unsuccessful in getting current posting approval from these groups' moderators, the FAQ cannot be posted to these newsgroups at this time.)

The Wine FAQ is reposted mid-month to:

comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine

The plain text version of the Wine FAQ is available by anonymous ftp from the following systems:

ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/ALPHA/Wine/ ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/ comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine/ WINE_(WINdows_Emulator)_Frequently_Asked_Questions ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/ALPHA/wine/Wine.FAQ

and on the World Wide Web at:

http://pw1.netcom/com/~dagar/winefaq.txt

and quite likely most of the other sites around the globe that mirror the Wine distribution from the its main distribution site:

tsx-11.mit.edu

The Wine FAQ is available on the World Wide Web (WWW), reachable with any web browser that can understand frames, at:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~dagar/winefaq.html

An unframed version is available at:

http://pw1.netcom.com/~dagar/winecontent.html

If you have any technical questions about Wine, please post these to the newsgroup:

comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine

If you have any suggestions for corrections, changes, expansion or further clarification of this FAQ, please send them to the Wine FAQ author and maintainer listed in question 7.2.

Copyright Notice

The Wine FAQ is Copyright (C) 1995-1998 by P. David Gardner at dagar@ix.netcom.com and at http://pw1.netcom.com/~dagar/index.html. Permission is hereby granted to freely link to, copy, archive and republish this FAQ in its entirety without remuneration to the author/maintainer, provided that all information contained herein is kept intact and that no portion is altered in any way without prior written permission of the author/maintainer. If you have any questions concerning these permissions, please email or write the FAQ author/maintainer at one of the addresses contained herein for clarification.