The WINE compatibility layer for Unix-like OSes enables Linux and macOS systems to run Windows applications like graphic-intensive games. Wine software library, Winelib, using which developers can compile Windows applications to help port them to Unix-like systems.
Download Link available on winehq.org,  as a free and open-source

Configuration Tool

Open a window for Applications, Libraries (DLLSelection), Audio (Sound drivers), Desktop integration, and Graphics.
From the Application panel, the user can select the version of Windows for which an application is designed.

The Drives panel list detected partitions,dandsWindowsed drives as .wine/drive_c. The Linux file system is listed as Z: drive.
Once configured, WINE will set up the .wine directory on the user’s home directory; within that directory, the drive_c guide is C, holding Windows and Program Files subdirectories. The Windows directory contains System and System32 directories, where DLL files are placed.
The Program files directory holds installed Windows programs, and their icons appear on the desktop.

Latest News

• Proton 5.0 was released in February 2020, a modified version of Wine that lives inside the Steam client for Linux and does everything for the user. It has a massive library of compatible games, at least 6,502, according to ProtonDB, that works perfectly.
• Wine-Staging 5.6 brings a fix for some games that have a non-functioning mouse input.
• The Wine 5.5 built-in libraries use Universal CRT (UCRT) C run-time. It is part of the Microsoft C++ Standard Library and is a component shipped as part of Windows 10 or Visual C++ on older releases.
• The Wine 5.0 update introduces Portable Executable (PE) modules, built in the Windows binary PE file format used in executables and DLLs. According to developers, the PE binaries copied into the Wine prefix instead of the fake DLL files, making the prefix look more like an actual Windows installation at the cost of some extra disk space. The new release also supports multiple displays and monitors, and there’s Vulkan 1.1 graphics driver support up to version 1.1.126 for Android and support for multiple monitors.

The fully functional Graphical User Interface (GUI), OpenOffice suite, and multimedia applications led to an increase in Linux users.

A decade ago, most PC users preferred Microsoft Windows.

MS Windows History

• 1985 – The introduction of Windows as ‘MS-DOS Executive’, which could run DOS applications side-by-side with Windows.
• 1987 – With the release of Intel’s 386 CPU, most companies started adopting MS Windows 2.0/286/386 286/386 operating system. It introduces overlapping resizable flexible windows and the simultaneous running of MS-DOSS applications.
• 1990-1992 – Introduced Windows 3. x with a colorful user interface. It was a breakthrough, including a DOS extender that broke the 1MB memory limit. It was stable and faster and widely used to multitask DOS applications.
  Further, it evolved into 16-bit Windows Workgroups Version 3.11 with added peer-to-peer networking.
• 1995 – The 32-bit Windows 95 with direct boot into Windows rather than in DOS was introduced. It has an enhanced user interface with a standard Start menu and Taskbar.
• 1999 – Windows 98 was introduced with an integrated IE (Internet Explorer) Web browser fix, ed numerous bugs, and upgraded its applications.
• 2000 – Windows ME, an upgrade to Windows 98
• 2001 – A 64-bit Windows XP with better security and administrative capabilities made available for AMD x86 and Intel Itanium CPUs.
• 2006 – Windows Vista – a client version of Windows, but most users criticized it for its bugs and behaviour
• 2007 – Introduced Windows 7 with improved stability
• 2012-2013 – Windows 8 – Current version
• 2015 – Windows 10
• 2017 – Windows 10 S (Streamlined version) obtains content via the Internet

Linux Journey

Today, Linux has emerged as a professional, rich-featured operating system for Personal Computers and Workstations.

• 1990 – Linus Benedict Torvalds developed Linux with other programmers
• August 25, 1991 – The Linux kernel publicly announced
• 1992 – kernel was re-licensed under the GNU-GPL, and the first Linux distributions created
• 1993: Kernel adapted to the GNU environment, which led over 100 developers to work on Linux Kernel and created a broad spectrum of applications. Slackware was released for the first time, and in the same year, the Debian project became the most extensive community distribution.
• 1994: Version 1.0 was released with all components of the kernel. The XFree86 project contributes to a graphical user interface (GUI). Red Hat and SUSE publish Commercial Linux distribution version 1.0.
• 1995: It’s ported on DEC Alpha, Sun SPARC, and many platforms.
• 1996: Kernel version 2.0, which can serve several processors simultaneously using symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), we ad. Thus, it is beneficial for many companies.
• 1998: IBM, Compaq, and Oracle announced support for Linux.
  The Cathedral and the Bazaar was first published as an essay (later as a book), resulting in Netscape publicly releasing the source code to its Netscape Communicator web browser suite. Thus, it brings the attention of the popular technical press to Linux’s open-source development model.
  A programmer’s group begins developing the graphical user interface KDE.
• 1999: A developers group starts working on the graphical environment GNOME, destined to become a free replacement for KDE, the then proprietary Qt toolkit. IBM announced an extensive project for the support of Linux.
• 2000: Dell announced as the No. 2 provider of Linux-based systems worldwide and the first major manufacturer to offer Linux across its entire product line.
• 2002: The media reports that “Microsoft killed Dell Linux.”
• 2004: The XFree86 team, with the existing X standards body, formed the X.Org Foundation, which resulted in substantially faster development of the X server for Linux.
• 2005: A free distribution project, openSUSE begins from Novell’s community. It also introduced the project OpenOffice.org version 2.0 and started supporting OASIS OpenDocument standards.
• 2006: Oracle releases the distribution of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Novell and Microsoft announced cooperation for better interoperability and mutual patent protection.
• 2007: Dell starts distributing pre-installed Ubuntu laptops
• 2009: Symbolic moment for the Linux-based economy as Red Hat’s market capitalization equals Sun’s
• 2011: Linux kernel version 3.0 released
• 2012: The aggregate Linux server market revenue exceeds the rest of the Unix market.
• 2013: Google’s Linux-based Android claims 75% of the smartphone market share
• 2014: Ubuntu claims 22,000,000 users.
• 2015: kernel version 4.0 released.
• 2019: kernel version 5.0 released.

References

• History of Linux, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux