How easy to run Windows-based applications on a Mac? Appendix Wineskin

As if we did not love their Macs and OS X, still entirely from Windows can not be waived and sometimes there are situations when you need to use one or another application. As an example, can cause bank customers, a variety of accounting and corporate specialized tools and games (where do without them). There are several ways to run Windows-based applications on Mac - is to use BootCamp or virtual machines like Paralles or Virtualbox. But if you need to work only with applications, not just the operating system, but there is a better way - a Wineskin, the famous port linuksovodam Wine. About him, and how to use it to run "of windows" application on OS X, I will tell in detail and show you in this article.

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Wineskin - is Mac-adaptation of Wine, an emulator (though not entirely correct to call it so, because the acronym Wine - stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator ") or the so-called compatibility layer that allows you to run Windows applications on some POSIX-compliant operating systems, including Linux and Mac. Do not worry, it's not as difficult as it seems, and not scary.

Installing Wineskin

1. The first thing we need to download Wineskin from the official website. At the moment, the latest version 2.5.12.

2. Move downloaded Wineskin.app in the Programs folder and run it.

3. When you first start will have a fresh engine spool «WS9Wine», which is a component essential for Windows-based applications. Click "+" and select «Download and Install».

4. Next, set the «Wrapper», by clicking on the button «Update». After that, you will notice that the button «Create New Blank Wrapper» becomes active.

Installing the Windows-based applications

Before you begin, make sure that you have the exe-file of the desired application and that it is supported by Wineskin. At this point, Wineskin does not work with all applications, and check the compatibility of a certain application can be in the official base Wine's AppDB.

1. To create a new wrapper'a ( "wrap"), press the «Create New Blank Wrapper» and assign it a name. For example, let's set on a popular Mac notebook Notepad ++.

2. Wineskin, offer download «Mono» package, which is required for .NET-applications. We agree and install.

3. In the same way set the component «Gecko», is required to run HTML-based applications.

4. After the wrapper is created, open it in the Finder, do a right click and select "Show package contents".

5. Here we have two folders ( "Contents", and "drive_c") and Wineskin.app.

6. Run Wineskin.app and click "Install Software".

7. Then click the "Choose Setup executable" and select the installation file of our Windows-based applications.

8. The installation process is completely similar to that in Windows. We install our application, following the instructions of the installation wizard.

Running the Windows-based applications

1. Now we have to test the installed application. To do this, we run our wrapper once again, but this time select the "Advanced" option.

2. Specify the path to the folder with our installed application, click «Test Run».

3. The application will run, and you should see something like this.

4. Everything. Now we can run our laying directly from Launchpad'a or Applications folder. For example, I it looks like this.

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If you need a full Windows environment, the ideal option for still use Bootcamp or virtual machine. But if you just want to be able to run the application, you can do a little blood and use Wineskin. As you can see, it is not too difficult.

We have questions, comments or suggestions? Welcome to the comments - I'm always happy to talk and help you, dear readers. Stay tuned, there is still a lot of interesting things!