January 7, 2007
Internet Explorer 7 on Linux
Updates
Sérgio from IEs4Linux wrote to say that the latest beta has fixed the black-box image problem, and also has no WGA requirements - so I think it’s best that everyone moves over to using his installer, as mine was a once-off and probably won’t be maintained! Thanks for the interest shown by everyone!
You can find the latest betas on this page: IEs4Linux Latest News
To install IE7 with IEs4Linux use:
./ies4linux –beta-install-ie7
—
How to get IE 5.0, IE 5.5, IE 6.0 and IE 7.0 (release) running concurrently on Linux.
The following documents the relatively short process needed to get Internet Explorer 7 running on a Linux system. So far, I have found one (two) problems with this method: it seems transparent GIFs appear as filled-black boxes in IE7, and secondly (this is actually a good thing for me), this won’t give you the IE7 interface running in Linux, but rather the IE7 rendering engine inside the IE6 interface. What this means is that you won’t be seeing IE7 tabs or the RSS reader, but you will be able to debug webpages and fix layout problems.
Microsoft conditional comments do work, unlike the standalone version of IE on Windows, so you will be able to develop and test webpages across almost all major browsers (IE 5-7, Firefox, Opera) on one Linux box! Also note that we will avoid Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage download validation checks, so pure-Linux users will be able to finish the process without having to find a genuine Windows machine to download the IE7 setup file (the check is avoided legitimately, by the way).
First, install IE 6 (and optionally 5.5 + 5.0) using the excellent IEs 4 Linux installer. Consider donating to this project to say thanks!
Follow the instructions appropriate for your Linux distribution at http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Installation. You must at least install IE6; 5.0 and 5.5 are optional and up to you. I assume that you used the default installation path of ~/.ies4linux - if you didn’t, ensure that you use the correct directory in the upcoming steps.
Once you have finished following the instructions, you can test your IE6 installation by running the ie6 command.
ie6
I used a browser version check website (use Google, I don’t want to hotlink them) to test the currently installed browsers:
firefoxreports ‘Firefox 2.0′ie6reports ‘MSIE 6.0′
Now for Internet Explorer 7:
To skip having to authenticate your copy of Windows at the Microsoft.com download site (since we’re on Linux and don’t have Windows…), make use of Google’s nicely customised IE7 installer; found at http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie7/. Download the file (IE7Setup_G.exe) and save it to a temporary folder.
Now, make a complete copy of your currently installed IE6 installation:
cd ~/.ies4linux
cp -r ie6/ ie7
sed ~/.ies4linux/bin/ie6 -e 's/ie6/ie7/g' > ~/.ies4linux/bin/ie7
chmod +x ~/.ies4linux/bin/ie7
Go to your IE7Setup_G.exe download and use cabextract which should be installed from earlier (IEs 4 Linux instructions).
cd ~/yourtempfolder
cabextract IE7Setup_G.exe
ls -la shows:
15505200 Dec 7 21:21 IE7-Setup.exe
Extract necessary files:
cabextract IE7-Setup.exe
for i in wininet iertutil shlwapi urlmon jscript vbscript \
ieframe mshtml mshtmled mshtmler advpack
do
chmod +x $i.dll
cp $i.dll ~/.ies4linux/ie7/drive_c/windows/system/$i.dll
done
chmod +x inetcpl.cpl
cp inetcpl.cpl ~/.ies4linux/ie7/drive_c/windows/system/
Now normaliz.dll and inetcplc.dll are needed, you can Google them, or use these links:
http://www.down-dll.com/dll/normaliz.zip
http://www.down-dll.com/dll/inetcplc.zip
Unzip both files and copy them to ~/.ies4linux/ie7/drive_c/windows/system/
unzip normaliz.zip
unzip inetcplc.zip
cp normaliz.dll ~/.ies4linux/ie7/drive_c/windows/system
cp inetcplc.dll ~/.ies4linux/ie7/drive_c/windows/system
IE 7 is now installed but will have view pane corruption unless you switch the Wine container to use Windows XP as the operating system:
WINEPREFIX=~/.ies4linux/ie7 winecfg
At the bottom of the initial page, change ‘Windows’ option to ‘Windows XP’ and press OK.
Make a shortcut:
cd ~/bin
ln -s ~/.ies4linux/bin/ie7 ie7
Running ie7 and using the previous browser test site results in:
ie7reports ‘MSIE 7.0′
—
Digg me: Internet Explorer 7 on Linux
Original IE7 RC1 post: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/news/28

I’ve just noticed that IEs 4 Linux actually have included beta support for IE7 in the installer, but notes that it crashes occasionally (IE7). I haven’t noticed this with my install, but I assume they’re pretty identical methods, so there shouldn’t be a difference…
My install still doesn’t require WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) though.
[…] http://webexpose.org/2007/01/07/internet-explorer-7-on-linux/ […]
Awesome! I will have to try this tonight. I have a new client that specifically wanted their site tested in IE7 and now I won’t have to give up my Linux desktop. Thank You!
Works fine up to “switch the Wine container to use Windows XP as the operating system”…”At the bottom of the initial page”
At the bottom of *what* initial page? IE7’s? There’s no “Windows” option to change to “Windows XP” there. Is there some other program I’m missing here? Some GUI to Wine?
[…] I read an article today about using Internet Explorer 7 on Linux. I haven’t tried it yet, but it seems to use WINE in order to actually run the web browser. […]
Doesn’t work.. ie7 features such as png transparency don’t work
Cómo instalar Internet Explorer 5, 6 y 7 en Linux…
Si desarrollas aplicaciones que funcionan en un entorno Web (o más explícitamente, dentro de un navegador de Internet), y lo haces en Linux, sabes que uno de los más grandes dolores de cabeza es hacer que tu código de HTML, Javascipt y CSS funcione…
Small note: for Debian, wine-utils is necessary for IE7 install (IE6 doesn’t require this) — wine-utils installs winecfg.
peter, run the command mentioned in the howto, a properties dialog will appear… i am as far as that but i still have graphical errors altough i have switched it to windows xp
[…] Das böse gibt es jetzt endlich auch für Linux … zwar nicht direkt von M$ aber über ein paar legale Umwege ist es kein Problem den Internet Explorer 7 unter Linux laufen zu lassen. Ein Slash-Dot-Artikel stieß mich auf folgenden Blogeintrag und nun laufen bei mir IE5, IE5.5, IE6 und IE7 (wobei sich der IE7 wohl noch signifikant anders verhält als unter Windows - Grafiken werden kaputt gemacht etc.). […]
[…] Internet Explorer 7 on Linux An anonymous reader writes to mention WebExpose is running a quick guide to get Internet Explorer 7.0 running on Linux. From the article: “Microsoft conditional comments do work, unlike the standalone version of IE on Windows, so you will be able to develop and test webpages across almost all major browsers (IE 5-7, Firefox, Opera) on one Linux box! Also note that we will avoid Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage download validation checks, so pure-Linux users will be able to finish the process without having to find a genuine Windows machine to download the IE7 setup file (the check is avoided legitimately, by the way).” […]
Hi!
I’m Sérgio Lopes, IEs4Linux author. As Michael noted on first comment, latest IEs4Linux beta version already include IE7 installations.
Our latest version already fixed some bugs you said: no need to authenticate before downloading (we download directly from MS, not from Google), GIFs no more with black backgrounds and conditional comments now work.
If you can, update your post so users can download our latest beta. The install procedure is always updated with the help of many people. So it’s a good idea to always get IEs4Linux latest version.
To install IE7 with IEs4Linux use: ./ies4linux –beta-install-ie7
And thanks for your post about IEs4Linux, specially when requesting support for our project; all people that donation some amount to our project help with its evolution - including all research that is being done around IE7.
Sérgio
Hmm, trying to copy pngfilt.dll over too (to get transparent PNGs) and wine dies with “Unhandled exception: unimplemented function msvcrt.dll.??_U@YAPAXI@Z”
… But as far as I can tell, that’s just MSVCRT_operator_new (dlls/msvcrt/heap.c). Well, undname says it’s really void * __cdecl operator new[](unsigned int) (i.e. the array version)…
Sure conditional comments work, but it’s executing the IE6 hacks. I can’t make the [if IE 7] clause work, anyone else experiencing this problem?
Sorry, it looks like the PNG thing was because ies4linux used some old native version of msvcrt; using winecfg to switch to the builtin version works better.
By the way I know it should be [ if IE7 ]. And thanks to the guy(s) who took the time to make it work on wine!
Why oh why would you want to bow to the IE crowd. M$ wins at least a partial victory with this. I manage several web sites and all of them are created for Linux. I really don’t care to cater to the kiddies running Windows.
@John Abbott:
Just because you ignore a problem doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The best thing you is show people alternatives, not try to shove them down their throats. You’ll only create Open Source bashers (and possibly a few M$ fanboys) with that attitude.
Not everyone can ignore the ~60% of people who still use IE. Sure, if you’re running a blog or something where it doesn’t really matter if you get get hits, you can ignore how it looks in IE.
Anyone who does websites professionally or semi-professionally can’t ignore 60% of the user base.
For example, a while back I put together a website for a graduate student. They were trying to get people to complete a survey. I developed it under Firefox, then tested it under IE 6 (this was before 7). It wasn’t compatible. I wasn’t going to get paid if I just slapped a notice that said “This site requires Firefox,” because nobody is going to download a new browser just to take this survey.
I wouldn’t say MS wins any kind of victory with this. It better enables web developers to move to Linux without having to keep Windows on hand for testing. That’s going to hurt Microsoft a lot more than having one site on the net that’s incompatible with IE.
Internet Explorer 7 on Linux…
Internet Explorer 7 on Linux…
[…] You can, if you want to run Internet Explorer 7 on Linux. The older versions were already available. Why in the world will I do that! For two reasons - to be able to test designs and visit sites that have special affinity for IE. Of course it will still be required to do a final test on IE on Windows, but this can help a lot during the design process. The technique involves installing IEs4Linux and then using Google’s customized IE7 installer. The IE versions run on wine which is a free implementation of Windows on Unix. […]
People,
Please use IEs4linux latest beta to install IE7. PNG works fine on IE7 installed by IEs4Linux. You’re discussing many things that are already fixed
Sérgio Lopes
Nice work! thanks for the article
After a standard ies4linux, I don’t have a ~/.ies4linux/bin folder … all is directly in the ~/bin folder …
All seems to be nice, but I’m unable to set proxy settings anymore …
“This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer.”
I will see if the dialog box enabling the choose of WindowsXP can help me =)
Thank you for this tip =)
Hi,
Thanks a lot for the tuts… The steps are easy to follow and the result seems cool…
However, I’m stuck with one glitch there. After installing the IE7 thing and all settings complete when i open the browser and try using Tools > Internet Options to check if my proxy settings are correct i set a message”This operation has been cancelled due to restrctions in effect on this computer. please contact your systemn admin…”.
I’ve made the changes in teh IE6 installation and it works fine for me (the proxy thing). I has made a copy of the ie6 folder for ie7 as instructed only after ie6 was working correctly.
Any aidea on how to debug this thing out? or some ugly hack on how to set the proxy used by IE7 without using the UI?
Sergio
The ./ies4linux –beta-install-ie7 is not working for me
[…] Adesso si puo’ aggiungere anche IE 7: http://webexpose.org/2007/01/07/internet-explorer-7-on-linux/ […]
Internet Explorer 7 on Linux…
Интересно упатство од типот how-to кое ете мозеби на некого и ќе му текне да го искористи(покрај mozilla firefox и незнам застоа ама ајде …). Ќе си чи…
[…] An anonymous reader writes to mention WebExpose is running a quick guide to get Internet Explorer 7.0 running on Linux. From the article: “Microsoft conditional comments do work, unlike the standalone version of IE on Windows, so you will be able to develop and test webpages across almost all major browsers (IE 5-7, Firefox, Opera) on one Linux box! Also note that we will avoid Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage download validation checks, so pure-Linux users will be able to finish the process without having to find a genuine Windows machine to download the IE7 setup file (the check is avoided legitimately, by the way).” […]
[…] (IE 7 für Linux)[http://webexpose.org/2007/01/07/internet-explorer-7-on-linux/] […]
[…] Why not for a change try this. Posted by Gaurav Filed in Uncategorized […]
Does not look like ie7 and crashes fast … tried on gentoo exactly as above. Crashed my X server too
nice work mike. keep it up.
i keep getting errors “the operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect ……..” when trying to open options (and most of the other) dialogs.
cookies doesn’t work.
tried all workarounds to no success.
vmware with winxp PE and portable ie7 distro still gonna live on my hd for some time
Sergio, many thanks. But using latest beta ies4linux-2.5beta3 from 8th of January 2007 I always have a mistake:
Parse error: tag mismatch in line 65
after that the installation is interrupted.
[…] 9th, 2007 · Filed: Asides · No Comments · Popularity: 1% 利用IEs4Linux在linux系统里上安装IE7。需要在Suse上实验下。要是成功的话,真的倒是尝试可以放弃windows了。 […]
madhur, if you have configured ie6 before copying into ie7, then if you will look into your user.reg at proxy settings you will find that the settings are ok, but this will not help if ie7 is failing to connect through this proxy to the internet. maybe if you have somewhere a working copy/install of ie7, you can compare that user.reg and see what needs to be changed so ie7 will work through proxy on linux too… (mine is not
)
Works great, thanks a lot!
But ie7 seems to crash on trying to load secure https pages. They load fine in ie6, though. Any thoughts?
[…] WebExpose is running a quick guide to get Internet Explorer 7.0 running on Linux. From the article: “Microsoft conditional comments do work, unlike the standalone version of IE on Windows, so you will be able to develop and test webpages across almost all major browsers (IE 5-7, Firefox, Opera) on one Linux box! Also note that we will avoid Microsoft’s Genuine Advantage download validation checks, so pure-Linux users will be able to finish the process without having to find a genuine Windows machine to download the IE7 setup file (the check is avoided legitimately, by the way).” […]
[…] Ever fancied running Internet Explorer 7 (or even earlier versions) on your Linux machine but didn’t find an easy way of doing it - admit it, wine doesn’t work that smoothly - IEs4Linux is the solution for you, check it out, or the complete guide. […]
[…] Yesterday’s IE7 on Linux post was (still is, for now) featured on the front-page of Slashdot, and subsequently experienced quite a sudden surge in web-traffic. Now, if there’s one thing that’s great about a large data set, it must be the ability to crudely analyse it and make incorrect assumptions! […]
[…] Web Expose » Internet Explorer 7 on Linux (tags: browser IE linux webdesign tools tutorial) Tags: browser, forms, IE, linux, opensource, php, tools, tutorial, webdesign, wizard […]
I’m new to WINE, so maybe it all looks the same, although it reports as “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1)”.
Excellent work, someone should look at www.quirksmode.org for known bugs in IE6 that are fixed in IE7 and test to see if they are fixed in this version for Linux.
Great post. As the next trick, I’m going to install IE7 on coLinux so I can run it on Windows 2000.
BTW, there’s a broken tag in your post, which renders everything after that in fixed-width font in Opera. Grep for ..
.. grep for </code</pre>
Ah, nice catch - thanks
Internet Explorer 7 for Linux…
To load Internet Explorer 7 for Linux, you just have to follow the tutorial from WebExpose using IEs4Linux script installer. Interestingly, you don’t need to bypass WGA with this method and thereby is 100% legal. This allows web designers to……
This is really awesome!
I remember a small news item from some website telling Windows Webdevelopers to download an Image from MSDN for Virtual PC, so they can test their websites on both IE6 and IE7. There was no other way to run both 6 & 7 on one machine.. And to make matters worse: the image would stop working after april 2007.
Whoahahaha!!
The only thing I need now is an instance of Safari 1.3 and 2.0, and my Linux-environment is the ultimate Webdevelopers machine.
Sergio ! Thanks a lot for your efforts!
[…] L’howto è disponibile a questo indirizzo: come per le precedenti versioni gli unici requisiti sono wine, cabextract e un pò di tempo libero.Fonte notizia: OSSblog.it […]
Impressive! It works! This is very useful for who needs to develop under linux and needs to test his web-app with most common browsers!
Thanks for the good tute
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zoerchshvk dqshklnrw ytnpwkny vpsvvorjisy mfmnvyglcg lpdskrv fwomodya…
[…] Instalowanie Internet Explorera 7 na Linuksie - dla linuksiarzy webmasterów. […]
[…] WebExpose Ekibi, Linux makinenizde hem IE 5.0 & IE 5.5 & IE 6.0 hem de IE 7.0 sürümlerini nasıl yükleyeceğinize dair bir girdi yazmışlar. Yalnız 7.0 sürümünü arayüzü ile değil de, 6.0′ın rendering motoruna gömülü olarak kullanabiliyorsunuz (ki zaten bizi de IE 7.0′ın getirdiği tab ya da rss okuyucu gibi son teknoloji (!) özelliklerine ihtiyacımız yok ). […]
IE on Linux…
Well this is quite old news but it is new to me - running IE on Linux - how cool is that. Click on the…
[…] IE7 on Linux Ever fancied running Internet Explorer 7 (or even earlier versions) on your Linux machine but didn’t find an easy way of doing it - admit it, wine doesn’t work that smoothly - IEs4Linux is the solution for you, check it out, or the complete guide.From the security perspective this should be a lot safer than running a full-blown Windows machine with IE on it, but you need to still be cautious as this is IE we are talking about . […]
[…] Web Expose » Internet Explorer 7 on Linux […]
[…] This news is about 2 weeks old, but I wanted to make sure I had it on my site so I can find it when I’m ready to add IE7 to the installed IE’s on my desktop. Here’s the ies4linux site. It should be noted that you are supposed to have a valid windows license before installing IE on your linux system. One of the REAL beauties of running linux is you have the choice of keeping MULTIPLE versions of MULTIPLE browsers installed side by side without virtualization. Spread the word.These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
[…] Link…. […]
[…] Internet Explorer 7 on Linux利用 IEs4Linux在linux系统里上安装IE7。需要在Suse上实验下。要是成功的话,真的倒是尝试可以放弃windows了。 […]
Hi,

I found your blog via google by accident and have to admit that youve a really interesting blog
Just saved your feed in my reader, have a nice day
i am the only guy who could’t get this work!!!
i want to!!
great article!!
[…] Internet Explorer 7 on Linux – Opis instalacji przeglądarki Internet Explorer dla Linuxa […]
Internet Explorer 7 on Linux…
Well I have been using Linux on my desktop for a while now, with no issues. I havent rebooted for over a week! Ubuntu seems stable, firefox and flash all work great! Something new I have done is switched to KDE. Gnome and KDE are loved by me equally bu…
hello!
can anyone please tell me would this version of IE work with plugins such as flash, google toolbar, etc?
does it support javascript? vb?
how much is the differences in supported technologies between win32 and this linux versions?
thank you
I recommend you check out the IEs4Linux link at the very top of the page - Sérgio is working hard on it. Flash works as far as I know.
I think Google Toolbar and other things count as non-important tasks though, the primary goal of running IE on linux is to provide you with a single platform that can test and debug websites on.
thanks, good job down!
[…] IE7 on Linux http://webexpose.org/2007/01/07/internet-explorer-7-on-linux/ […]