Alter Ego

Update 4 (29/01/2008): Somehow, it automagically works now. Too bad I don't know what happened :(

Update 3: Crap, apparently my company's portal still won't work on this IE. I guess its time for me to venture into QEMU.

Update 2: Apparently IE6 showed up on my menu: Applications > Internet > Internet Explorer 6.0. I am loving Ubuntu even more now :)

Update: I forgot, go say thank you to this guy.

Amazingly, this post coincide with Marjan's post where he managed to have multiple versions of Internet Explorer running on his Windows XP. After seeing that, I thought I should get Internet Explorer 6 running on my Ubuntu laptop so that I can do my work (sadly like Marjan, I can only use Internet Explorer 6 for my company's portal - follow the W3C standard lar!).

Anyways, here's how you get IE6 on Ubuntu Gutsy. Oh, btw, here's my setup. The steps follow later.

Operating System: Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Wine: 0.9.46 (default repository, no need to modify your sources.list)

1. Get the .deb package from here (let me know if you are confused).
2. Let's just say you downloaded it to Desktop. Open up a terminal, type in:

cd ~/Desktop

3. Make the file executable.

chmod +x ies4linux_2.99.0-1_i386.deb

4. Execute it using dpkg.

sudo dpkg -i ies4linux_2.99.0-1_i386.deb

If you run into any errors when downloading the needed files (if it says something like corrupted files) execute the same command again until you get all the files.

5. Once that is done, simply type in ie6 and press Enter (binaries are installed in /usr/bin/).

Tada! IE6 on Ubuntu 7.10!



Note:
1. This installer doesn't work with proxy. So do it at home yea.
2. It requires cabextract package, so install it first (sudo apt-get install cabextract) .

Warning:
1. You shouldn't use IE for every day surfing. It's dangerous - seriously. Only use it when you are forced to. Like my company's non-W3C compliant portal. Or maybe you are a web developer testing your website's rendering. Other than that, stick to Firefox - or maybe Opera- or Safari :P