
Run Windows only applications in Ubuntu? Well, here’s how to install the latest Wine development release with bug fixes and new features in Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic.
For those who don’t know about Wine:
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, Mac OSX, & BSD. 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 began in 1993 under the initial coordination of Bob Amstadt as a way to support running Windows 3.1 programs on Linux. Very early on, leadership over Wine’s development passed to Alexandre Julliard, who has managed the project ever since. Over the years, as the Windows API and applications have evolved to take advantage of new hardware and software, Wine has adapted to support new features, all while being ported to other OSes, becoming more stable, and providing a better user-experience.
An ambitious project by definition, work on Wine would steadily continue for 15 years before the program finally reached v1.0, the first stable release, in 2008. Several releases later, Wine is still under active development today, and although there is more work to be done, millions of people are estimated to use Wine to run their Windows software on the OS of their choice.

open Windows .exe file directly with Wine
Install Wine Development in Ubuntu:
While Ubuntu repositories provide the stable Wine 1.6 release, the latest development Wine 1.7 with bug fixes and new supports is available in Wine official PPA. So far, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 14.10 are supported.
To add the PPA, press Ctrl+Alt+T to open terminal. When it opens, paste the command below and hit Enter to run:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
Type in your user password when it asks.
After added the PPA, install Wine1.7 from Synaptic Package Manger after clicking Reload button. Or just run the commands below in terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.7
That’s it.
When a future release is out and made into the PPA, running regular system update via Software Updates will automatically upgrade the wine1.7 to the latest.