Something I’ve been trying to do for some time is to get Internet Explorer running under Debian using Wine. I figured I’d have a proper go at doing it today and joy of joy, I managed it (with a the help from a cunning script). Here’s how:

Before we start, I am running Debian Stable.

Firstly you need to install the latest version of Wine which I got from: Wine HQ - instructions on how to get it are there too. Having the latest version of Wine appears to be a prerequisite of running Internet Explorer it seems, although it has been for quite some time, so surely the ‘latest’ version of Wine I would have installed 6 months ago would be the standard version now? Anyway, get the latest.

Whilst Googling around on how to go about installing IE, I found this: http://sidenet.ddo.jp/winetips/config.html

Download, unzip, run, answer questions, boggle as Internet Explorer runs and the lovely little script creates you My Computer' and ‘Internet Explorer’ icons on your desktop.

Cop out, me?

Anyway, now I can run IE (very useful for webdev debugging) on my Linux PC and not have to worry about Remote Desktop-ing into the slow-arse Windows machine to use it. Yay!