Microsoft loves Linux. Hmm, this is the phrase that Microsoft wants you to eat but I cannot digest these words. There are many things that Microsoft is doing recently that may make you think that their words are genuine, like opening some code of their dot net language, implementing the Ubuntu shell in Windows, and some more things.
But, what I gather from all this is that Microsoft wants you to become locked into their technology and then before you know it, they will remove all these open code or make some new version whose code will be closed. Beware of Microsoft's tactics and stay clear of their intentions.
Most developers have zeroed in on Chrome/Firefox for testing their code, but for some reasons, some clients demand that the code should be compatible with the proprietary Internet Explorer. If you develop on Linux, you will be in a difficult situation, since no version of Internet Explorer runs fluently in Linux. Some old versions do run under WINE, but that would be too older versions. For newer versions, i.e. IE 8+ there is no way to install these directly in Linux.
So what are your options: To buy a Windows PC / To buy a Windows license to run in a VM.
Hmm, both are costly options. What to do? I have recently been made known of a new tool, ievms (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms). What this ievms script does is that it fetches the Microsoft provided VMs for your specified IE version and installs the specified VM in Linux. You can then boot into this VM and use the required IE and other software in the VM. But, there is a caveat, the VM will work only for a set number of days. I think its around 60 days (need to check it out once more). Then after the expire period, you are required to re-download the VMs (need to check this out too).
The github website (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) has the instructions to use this script. First, you are required to install VirtualBox and then you can use this script.
An example from the github page:
To install specific IE versions (IE7, IE9 and EDGE only for example) use:
But, what I gather from all this is that Microsoft wants you to become locked into their technology and then before you know it, they will remove all these open code or make some new version whose code will be closed. Beware of Microsoft's tactics and stay clear of their intentions.
Most developers have zeroed in on Chrome/Firefox for testing their code, but for some reasons, some clients demand that the code should be compatible with the proprietary Internet Explorer. If you develop on Linux, you will be in a difficult situation, since no version of Internet Explorer runs fluently in Linux. Some old versions do run under WINE, but that would be too older versions. For newer versions, i.e. IE 8+ there is no way to install these directly in Linux.
So what are your options: To buy a Windows PC / To buy a Windows license to run in a VM.
Hmm, both are costly options. What to do? I have recently been made known of a new tool, ievms (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms). What this ievms script does is that it fetches the Microsoft provided VMs for your specified IE version and installs the specified VM in Linux. You can then boot into this VM and use the required IE and other software in the VM. But, there is a caveat, the VM will work only for a set number of days. I think its around 60 days (need to check it out once more). Then after the expire period, you are required to re-download the VMs (need to check this out too).
The github website (https://github.com/xdissent/ievms) has the instructions to use this script. First, you are required to install VirtualBox and then you can use this script.
An example from the github page:
To install specific IE versions (IE7, IE9 and EDGE only for example) use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9 EDGE" bash
Also, do note that the size of the VMs are quite large. From the github page:
A full ievms install will require approximately 69G:
Servo:.ievms xdissent$ du -ch *
11G IE10 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
22M IE10-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
11G IE11 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
28M IE11-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
1.5G IE6 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
724M IE6 - WinXP.ova
717M IE6_WinXP.zip
1.6G IE7 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
15M IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe
1.6G IE8 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
16M IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe
11G IE9 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
4.7G IE9 - Win7.ova
4.7G IE9_Win7.zip
10G MSEdge - Win10-disk1.vmdk
5.1G MSEdge - Win10.ova
5.0G MSEdge_Win10.zip
3.4M ievms-control-0.3.0.iso
4.6M lsar
4.5M unar
4.1M unar1.5.zip
69G total
Its better to use Chrome/Firefox, but if you do need IE for various reasons, then I think this ievms script will help.
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