Wine 1.0: worth while waiting for 15 years

Technology news and updates blog article

29th June 2008

Many users like Linux. Moreover, many users already use it as the main operating system at work or at home, but there is always one - two programs that work only under Windows only and no replacing for such program under Linux. Especially for such cases 15 years ago a group of enthusiasts decided to create a platform Wine, which would run Windows-applications in the environment X Window without emulators and virtual machine. And here came the day when the project Wine reached the stage 1.0. Wine is an alternative open realization of basic software interface Windows API for UNIX-like operating systems, including Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Solaris.
Wine stands for “Wine is not emulator”. Until 2005, the project has been in the alpha stage, but since then new versions have begun coming out every two week. With the help of Wine users can run many Windows-applications without installing Windows at all.
From 1993 to 2008 Wine has passed the long hard road of the program which worked sporadically, and then periodically, to a reliable and secure technology used in most modern commercial products.