Wine software
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| Original author(s) | Alexandre Julliard |
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| Developer(s) |
Wine authors (1,534) |
| Initial release | 4 July 1993 |
| Stable release |
2.0.2 / July 20, 2017
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| Preview release |
2.16 / September 1, 2017
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| Repository | source |
| Development status | Active |
| Written in | C,Yacc,JavaScript,Objective-C |
| Operating system |
Linux FreeBSD macOS (development) |
| Platform | IA-32, i686, x86-64 |
| Size | 18.0 MB (compressed tar.xz) |
| Type | Compatibility layer |
| License | GNU LGPL v2.1+ |
| Website | www |
Wine (recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator) is a free and open-source compatibility layer that aims to allow computer programs (application software and computer games) developed for Microsoft Windows to run on Unix-like operating systems. Wine also provides a software library, known as Winelib, against which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.
Wine emulates the Windows runtime environment by translating Windows system calls into POSIX-compliant system calls, recreating the directory structure of Windows systems, and providing alternative implementations of Windows system libraries, system services through wineserver and various other components (such as Internet Explorer, the Windows Registry Editor, and msiexec). Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues.
The name Wine initially was an abbreviation for Windows Emulator. The phrase "Wine Is Not an Emulator" is a reference to the fact that no code emulation or virtualization occurs when running a Windows application under Wine. "Emulation" usually refers to the execution of compiled code intended for one processor (such as x86) by interpreting/recompiling software running on a different processor (such as PowerPC). Its meaning later shifted to the recursive acronym Wine Is Not an Emulator in order to differentiate the software from CPU emulators. While the name sometimes appears in the forms WINE and wine, the project developers have agreed to standardize on the form Wine.
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