What is the recommended alternative to Wine?

My understanding that Wine was not included in the release of Zorin 15.1 Lite because of possible security issues. If so, what is the recommended alternative?

tcbear wrote:My understanding that Wine was not included in the release of Zorin 15.1 Lite because of possible security issues. If so, what is the recommended alternative?

Not aware of a viable alternative to WINE that works as well as WINE, however, you can install Wine5 even though it was not included in the release of Zorin.
My following recommendation may not be worth much: Some people do need and use software that is Windo$ specific.
But I will make it anyway; When I started on Linux, I made it a point to install Wine in order to use a variety of software. There were some minor struggles here and there, but over-all, I got it working and got all the software installed that I wanted. But over time, I began to realize that I did not use nor need to use the software I worked so hard to install as much as I thought I needed to. There were Linux specific open source alternatives that worked as well, if not even better.
This is my latest Zorin 15 build, using Zorin 15 Lite with Cinnamon desktop - and Wine has not touched the last three builds.
So, that is something that you may consider- it may apply to you or it may not...

That being said, to install Wine 5 on your machine:
https://tecadmin.net/install-wine-on-ubuntu/
It's pretty easy. Please ensure Gecko and other needed packages are also installed.

The only alternative is to run Windows itself as a VM inside of Virtual Box. For this your rig should have a minimum of 8 Gb decent spec RAM with 4 Gb RAM allocated to your version of Windows. PlayOnLinux uses WINE, Codewears CrossOver uses WINE (it is the commercial arm of the WINE project). From a security angle running a VM of windows is your best option unless (sigh) you need it for gaming. (PS4 is my game box of choice - after all Linux is at it's core - not like the Red Ring of Death NTFS of X-box! ). Wine introduces a security risk to your system, your VM doesn't - provided you don't allow it to be in 'promiscuous' mode with the host. If your VM goes down with a virus, you just delete your VM and replace it with that backup you made of it to an external drive (whilst off line - ransomware is so advanced it can detect make and model of external device while you are online!) after you have completed all system updates and software that you use regularly. Obviously you are going to be limited graphic wise. I noticed on creating VM on family member's pc that it is now possible to get 256 Mb of Graphics memory in VB.

I saw: https://askubuntu.com/questions/562388/ ... is-running
On that link I was referred to: https://wiki.winehq.org/SecuringWine, which I found amusing, until I get a virus of course.

What are the Linux open source alternatives that worked better than WINE? That is what I would be interested in.

It's not Wine but you can play games supported in Steam:

https://lutris.net/about/

There was a project setup as an alternative to steam - athanaea - but not sure it worked well, if at all.

tcbear wrote:What are the Linux open source alternatives that worked better than WINE? That is what I would be interested in.

Can you say what software you are looking for? If we start all listing all the alternatives we use, that list would get very long and most of it wouldn't interest you.

https://alternativeto.net/software/wine/?platform=linux
At least for me, PlayOnLinux still required me to install Wine.

carmar wrote:https://alternativeto.net/software/wine/?platform=linux
At least for me, PlayOnLinux still required me to install Wine.

If you look very carefully at that list, most if not all are reliant on WINE - what WINE does is rely on .dll's (Dynamic Link Libraries) ... hence it's acronym 'Wine Is No Emulator' in as much the same way as GNU is GNU is Not Unix.