Obviously, you will need a Chrome OS device that supports Crostini. If you want to tinker with PlayOnLinux on your Chromebook, the following method worked for me.įirst, you will need to prepare your Chromebook to use Linux applications.

Regardless, I was determined to get this working so I set out to install and run MSPaint on my Chromebook. For that reason, some applications simply won’t install while others will launch but are all but unusable. The downside is the fact that Chrome OS isn’t technically running a full version of Linux and it’s running in a container and that restricts what it can and cannot do.

Not only that, but it also handles the various dependencies that WINE needs for each individual application. The benefit of using PlayOnLinux is that it offers a library of applications and games that you can install directly from the GUI. Installing WINE on Chrome OS is a bit of a pain but thanks to another application called PlayOnLinux, the process is made a bit less painful with the graphic user interface that PlayOnLinux offers. As the title of this article implies, this is likely not a viable app alternative for anyone. So, I gave it a shot and here are the results of my tinkering. Now that Chrome OS will run Linux apps via its Debian-based container tech, a lot of users are wanting to know if they can install and use Windows applications using WINE. exe games on Linux and macOS but it can be used to run a wide variety of Windows applications. On other operating systems, WINE still has a lot of use cases and many gamers use the “compatibility layer” to run old school. Instead of simulating internal Windows logic like a virtual machine or emulator, Wine translates Windows API calls into POSIX calls on-the-fly, eliminating the performance and memory penalties of other methods and allowing you to cleanly integrate Windows applications into your desktop. Wine (originally an acronym for “Wine Is Not an Emulator”) is a compatibility layer capable of running Windows applications on several POSIX-compliant operating systems, such as Linux, macOS, & BSD. What is WINE you ask? Well, by the project’s own definition,

As we dive deeper into the capabilities of Linux on Chrome OS, I would be remiss if I didn’t spend some time experimenting with WINE.

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