Wine (software)

Wine (software)

Wine is a free and open source software application that aims to allow computer programs written 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.[2] Wine is a compatibility layer. It duplicates functions of a Windows computer by providing alternative implementations of the DLLs that Windows programs call,[citation needed] and a process to substitute for the Windows NT kernel. This method of duplication differs from other methods that might also be considered emulation, where Windows programs run in a virtual machine.[3] Wine is predominantly written using black-box testing reverse-engineering, to avoid copyright issues.[4]

The name Wine initially was an acronym for Window Emulator.[5] Its meaning later shifted to the recursive backronym, Wine Is Not an Emulator in order to differentiate the software from other emulators.[6] While the name sometimes appears in the forms WINE and wine, the project developers have agreed to standardize on the form Wine.[7]