You can run MSIE 6 on Linux quite well by now. Not that there is any reason to do so. (Okay, maybe if you are a webdesign professional you’ll want to make sure your layout works fine with MIES, too.)

So for me, this is more a demo on how far wine is.

[Update: the link below is dead, I suggest using ies4linux instead. Although I still recommend setting up a separate “windows” user, for security reasons.]

Here’s how:

  • Get a recent wine, e.g. 0.9.9 or 0.9.10
  • Add a new user named “windows” to your system, because you don’t want to risk running windows software like IE with your regular user account, will you? It could read your email!
  • Add the freshly created windows user to the video and audio groups (adduser windows audio) if you want 3D or sound
  • Use gksu -u windows xterm to open a shell as the windows user
  • From Microsoft, download dcom98.exe and ie6setup.exe and save them to /tmp
  • Type the following: 
    cd
wget http://www.kievinfo.com/2/ie6_overrides.reg
wine regedit ie6_overrides.reg
wine /tmp/dcom98.exe
wine /tmp/ie6setup.exe
exit
  • You can now surprise your favourite linux-critics (“but linux won’t run my $favourite_program, will it?”) with a working Internet Exploder by running gksu -u windows wine C:\\Program\ Files\\Internet\ Explorer\\IEXPLORE.EXE - and it should not be able to read your email, much more secure than if you were running Windows.

Or, you could just be happy with not using Windows software. There is so much good FL/OSS software around, that I’m always seriously disappointed when I have to fight some windows software. I don’t need it, do you?