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Ivan
Asked: 2010-12-17 17:47:09 +0800 CST

How to install (or mock) Internet Explorer?

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I need to install a Windows application, which checks if there is Internet Explorer of at least 5th version installed and refuses to install (while I believe it does not really need it to work) if it is not.

I've tried winetricks to install ie 8, 7, 6 full, 6 versions it offers - none worked - versions 7 and 8 installers report a function missing in msvcr (installing all msvcr versions didn't help), ie6 report some other error (I'll specify if it matters).

I've also tried IEs4Linux - it also fails, complaining for a "BadIDChoice" X Window System error received by ies4linux-gtk.py.

Is there a way to install any IE version in Ubuntu 10.10 with Wine or to mock its presence? I don't even need it to work, just to be installed in the Wine system so that other Windows programs could see it's there.

I use Ubuntu 10.10 with Wine 1.3.8.

wine browser ie

4 Answers

  1. If you want to fake having it installed, try : winetricks

    alt text

    If this isn't working, I can't help you much, except to suggest installing with playonlinux and then replacing your wine prefix with the ie's prefix, but that would mean you have to reinstall everything.

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  2. Ivan, in the Wine HQ AppDB (http://appdb.winehq.org), there are entries for several versions of Internet Explorer. Have you tried them all with no success? Pay attention to the versions, it's not unusual that a newer Wine version breaks apps that worked in a previous one.

    However, as I have never had the need for using IE under Wine (and never tried it), for the sake of easeness, I would expressly recommend you use PlayOnLinux you can

    apt-get install playonlinux

    So far, I had zero problems when installing games & apps through scripts in their repositories. There are many possibilities here:

    • Use it directly to install IE 6 or 7
    • Use their site to check what their scripts do, so you can do it yourself instead (check http://www.playonlinux.com/repository/?cat=4 and then click over IE 6 & 7 entries)
    • You can just use it to manage a "Wine environment" and configure different Wine prefixes/versions for each app - even if there's no script available from them, but you manage to configure/run the application by yourself
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  3. The answers are in this blog post of mine. Since you already have the Wine PPA with the beta wines, you should already have winetricks. Literally all you need to do at this point is:

    winetricks ie6

    (or winetricks ie7, or winetricks ie8). Note that I'm not certain if ie8 actually works at this point, but it at least installs.

    If you want fake IE, this is now a built in feature of Wine, provided you have Wine's gecko installed. Wine-gecko is in a separate package, but it should have been installed automatically when you installed Wine.

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  4. If you use firefox, you can use this extension to mock the browser agent.

    I know its kinda not related, since you need to check for existence, but the next step might be using the IE, and it might be helpful for that.

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