Wine is a free implementation of the Microsoft Windows API. It does not require Windows to be installed, it is basically a layer between Linux (X and OpenGL) and the Windows application. See http://www.winehq.org/ and to see what has been tested and should therefore run under wine check the database: http://appdb.winehq.org/

(register to have access is required). Wine is not a Windows emulator, there is also not a window where wine runs inside. Having installed wine, the simplest way to start is just clicking on the desktop icon. Do not run wine as root this is not necessary and no windows virus with root ownership arrives!

As regular user run winecfg to configure wine (and its Windows version).

There is a drive C under ~/.wine/drive_c

Wine puts its stuff in ~/.wine. Everything the user installs using wine is put there, therefore it can be run it as regular user.

To try out if wine works:

wine winemine

wine wordpad

wine notepad

wine winefile

No root permission is required to install a program, since everything resides in the users home directory: wine<linux path to setup.exe>

Sometimes the line above just unzips files so run the real setup.exe there:

wine ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/temp/setup.exe

To start a program go to the directory where the installed program is

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/<here is the directory>

and then type

wine<program name>

If lucky it works, if not observe the error messages maybe a dll is missing. If so, look on a windows computer where the dll is and copy it over to the corresponding location in ~/.wine/drive_c/windows. On http://www.my-dll.com/ the missing dll's can be found to be downloaded, but be aware of the copyrights.

Finally consider to do links from ~/home/.wine/drive_c to where you would like to have your data.