Most Linux users would be appalled by the idea of attempting to contaminate a Linux installation with any Microsoft product, especially Internet Explorer. However, many Web sites don't render properly using regular Linux browsers, such as Firefox or Konqueror. Other sites either require ActiveX controls or are designed to work only with Internet Explorer. Also, how can you test your new Web design and JavaScript for IE if you're an Apache and Linux maven?
For those who may have the need for Internet Explorer without the need to move to another machine or reboot, there is a solution for you: an extremely useful project aptly named IEs4Linux. In this article, we describe how to install and begin using multiple versions of Internet Explorer using Wine and IEs4Linux.
What's IEs4Linux?
IEs4Linux is a small shell script that can be run via a console on any Linux machine with Wine installed. As the title suggests, it allows you to quickly and easily install that most infamous of Microsoft products: Internet Explorer.
The creator of IEs4Linux is Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior, a 21 year old Brazilian student and self-proclaimed lover of Linux and OpenSource. Naturally, being open source, IEs4Linux is free. However, as with many people working on open source projects, Sérgio's funding comes from the community; if you found IEs4Linux helpful, you can PayPal him a few dollars to continue development of the project.
IEs4Linux relies on the Wine project to supply an implementation of the Microsoft Windows API. The IEs4Linux script actually downloads the required CAB files directly from the Microsoft site; then, using cabextract, copies the files to a new Wine profile. This way, your existing Wine profiles are not affected, and any other software you have running will be just fine. In addition to installing Internet Explorer versions 5, 5.5, and 6, IEs4Linux also can install Flash 9 for you from Adobe.
IEs4Linux is a GPL product; however, Internet Explorer is a copyrighted product of Microsoft. This means that you will need to be in possession of a valid Windows licence version greater than 95, although it will not be asked for during the installation process.
Author's note
For the purposes of this article, I'll assume you're running the latest version of Ubuntu as your Linux distribution. IEs4Linux will work with almost every distribution, but the installation routine varies. This article assumes that you already have Ubuntu Desktop installed and operational.
Depending on how you like to install your software, I have included two sets of instructions, first the graphical (GUI) method and lastly the console (CLI) method.
Installing the required packages
To install all the applications required to enable IEs4Linux to run properly, ensure that you have the Universe repositories enabled. Open the Software Sources configuration screen, which can be found under Toolbar | System | Administration | Software Sources.
More... Brian Smith, TechRepublic
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