Many more professional programs have been written for the Windows operating system than for Linux. And when it comes to games, most of them only work on Windows. But this situation does not contribute to the development of Linux. Recently the situation is improving and popular game-developers are releasing more and more products for Linux, but there are still not enough of them.
With the Wine compatibility layer you can run different Windows programs on Linux without emulation. But wine does not yet implement all the Windows features, so it often requires additional configuration or installation of libraries from Windows. PlayOnLinux has been developed to make it easy for newcomers to install and run Windows programs in Linux. It contains recipes for installing popular programs that run automatically.
PlayOnLinux is a graphical shell over Wine which makes it very easy to use. As I said already, PlayOnLinux contains ready-made installation scripts developed by users. These scripts contain everything you need to install the program.
Not only a separate bottle (a folder with all programs and system files) is used for each program, but also a separate version of Wine. The scripts also include commands to install packages, commands to add and register libraries, and other features. In fact, if the program is listed on PlayOnLinux, you can install it by following a few wizard steps. But you still need to have an installer for the program.
How to use PlayOnLinux?
In the following we will take a closer look at how to use the program and install Windows applications.
- interface
Let’s start with the program interface. It is pretty simple.
At the very top of the window is the main menu, through which you can access most of the program’s functions;
Just below is the toolbar, which allows you to do basic actions;
Further down, it is divided into two panels. On the left panel are shortcuts to basic actions, such as installing programs;
The right panel contains a list of programs that have been installed;
At the bottom of the window is the status bar, which displays the status of updates or other data. - Installing a program
To install a Windows program, first select “Install Program” from the main menu. - Launch Programs.
If you click on one of the shortcuts, several functions are displayed in the left pane, such as shortcut editing, debugging and others. - Setting up the shell
Many programs require additional customization to run, even scripts. PlayOnLinux setup is quite simple. Open the context menu of the shortcut you need and select “Wine Setup”.
Here you can perform all the necessary Wine settings, which are available in winecfg. To access the registry, just run the second menu item “Registry Editor”