Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

How to Install Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) on Linux

Posted: 09 Nov 2010 02:18 AM PST

Internet Explorer 8 (also known as IE 8) is the latest but not quite the greatest web browser from Microsoft. It offers several enhancements over its predecessor that includes improvements in RSS, Cascading Style Sheets, and Ajax support. It also has several added features like automatic tab crash recovery, suggested sites, web slices, and accelerators (a form of selection-based search).

If you are using Linux and if for some reason you need to install and use Internet Explorer 8, don't worry because it is really quite easy to do so. Using Wine, I've shared with you how I installed and run Safari 4 on Linux. To install IE 8 on Linux, you will also need Wine.

Installing Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) on Linux:

1. Install Wine and winetricks like we previously did (see Installing Safari on Linux) and setup the following Windows redistributables:

corefonts

gdiplus

msls31

msxml3

riched20

riched32

tahoma

2. Search and download msctf.dll, msimtf.dll, uxtheme.dll from HERE, and then using the Wine menu, navigate and place the DLLs inside /system32.

3. Configure Wine by navigating to Wine --> Configure Wine --> Libraries and set the following DLLs as shown:

"browseui="native, builtin"

"crypt32"="native, builtin"

"gdiplus"="native"

"hhctrl.ocx"="native, builtin"

"hlink"="native, builtin"

"iernonce"="native, builtin"

"iexplore.exe"="native, builtin"

"itircl"="native, builtin"

"itss"="native, builtin"

"jscript"="native, builtin"

"mlang"="native, builtin"

"mshtml"="native, builtin"

"msimtf"="native,builtin"

"msxml3"="native,builtin"

"riched20"="native,builtin"

"riched32"="native,builtin"

"secur32"="native, builtin"

"shdoclc"="native, builtin"

"shdocvw"="native, builtin"

"shlwapi"="native, builtin"

"url"="native, builtin"

"urlmon"="native, builtin"

"usp10"="native, builtin"

"uxtheme"="native,builtin"

"wininet"="builtin"

"wintrust"="native, builtin"

"xmllite"="native, builtin"

4. Download Internet Explorer 8 from HERE.

5. Navigate to where you saved the IE 8 installer and run it using Wine with this command:

$ wine IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe

6. Install IE 8 as normal, but don't select the Windows security updates option during installation as it may cause issues later on.

7. After installation, you will now see Internet Explorer 8 under Wine --> Programs. Here is a screenshot of Internet Explorer 8 running on Linux courtesy of Wine-Reviews.

Although running IE 8 on Linux is buggy, it renders web pages well. So if you are a web developer, you may find keeping Internet Explorer 8 on Linux handy.