If you wish to run a Windows application on your Linux or POSIX compatible operating system, then Wine might be your answer.

The Wine project was started way back in 1993 to support Windows 3.1 programs on Linux systems. However, it is still under testing stage and has not been released to the general public.

Some of Wine features are listed below:

Binary Compatibility 

• Wine is designed for POSIX compatible operatings systems (eg. Linux and FreeBSD)
• Wine loads on Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Windows 3.x and DOS programs and libraries
• “bug-for-bug” compatibility with Windows
• Win32 compatible memory layout, exception handling, threads and processes

Graphics

• Wine supports X11, TrueType (.ttf/.ttc) and Windows Bitmap (.fon) Fonts
• X11-based graphics allows remote display to any X terminal
• Support for OpenGL based games and applications have been added to Wine
• Printing via PostScript driver or legacy native Win16 printer drivers
• DirectX support for games (limited Direct3D support)
• Desktop-in-a-box or mixable windows
• Wine has enhanced Metafile (EMF) and Windows Metafile (WMF) driver
• Windows MultiMedia (WinMM) layer support with builtin codecs

Allows Windows program to interface with: 

• Multi-lingual keyboards and CJK input method support via XIM
• Modems, serial devices
• Sound devices via ALSA, OSS, ARTS, JACK, and libaudio etc
• Wine supports networks like TCP/IP and IPX
• Windows Tablets via XInput (eg. Wacom)
• ASPI Scanners

Wine API

• Wine is designed for source and binary compatibility with Win32 code
• Wine is compilable on a wide range of C compilers
• Permits mixing of Win32 and POSIX code
• Win32 API test suite to ensure compatibility
• Wine permits mixing of ELF (.so) and PE (.dll/.exe) binaries in one address space
• Win32 compatible header files
• Automatically generated API documentation
• Resource compiler 
• Message compiler
• IDL compiler
• Wine provides extensive Unicode support
• Internationalization — Wine supports 16 languages
• Built-in debugger and configurable trace messages
• External memory checker support using Valgrind
•  Sample programs

Linux Mint has been one of the most surprising packages this year with the Open Source community. It has one of the most user-friendly distributions with complete customizable desktops, menus, a whole lot of unique configuration tools, a web-based package for installation interface and a wide number of editions.

Linux Mint is a Debian-based distribution and has a good package manager. Linux Mint also uses Ubuntu repositories and hence it’s compatible. This Ubuntu compatibility has given Linux Mint users more access to packages and software.

The core purpose for this development was to produce an elegant and upto date GNU/Linux desktop distribution which is also comfortable at the user end.

The first version of Linux Mint was Linux Mint 1.0 Ada. This was followed by Linux Mint 2.0 Barbara, Linux Mint 2.1 Bea, Linux Mint 2.2 Bianca, Linux Mint 3.0 Cassandra, Linux Mint 3.1 Celena, Linux Mint 4.0 Daryna and the latest release being Linux Mint 5 Elyssa.

You can download all these versions on their official website. Please click here to go to the website.

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