How to Install Internet Explorer on Mandriva

Written by: Tolga BALCI • Edited by: J. F. Amprimoz
Updated Aug 8, 2010 • Related Guides: Internet Explorer 7 | Internet Explorer | Linux

Installing Internet Explorer in your Mandriva distribution is not a demanding process, even for newcomers. Here we discuss how.

Introduction

You may need Internet Explorer for many reasons; you may be a programmer or web designer and need to check how your website looks with different browsers, or you may need to open Internet-Explorer-only websites, such as Outlook Web Access.

The procedure is made as simple as possible with IEs4Linux, which is one of the very strong contributions to the Linux world from Brazil. The developer is Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior, who is studying Computer Science at the University of São Paulo. He has made the installation as simple as possible with scripts which go to the relevant websites, download the necessary files and installs them to your system.

Installing Internet Explorer on Mandriva

Currently Internet Explorer 6, 5.5 and 5 are supported with Ies4Linux. Support for IE 7 is underway and in Beta but with some hacks you can get it to work. We will go through each process one by one.

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You will have a much smaller download size for Internet Explorer because only the files that are required by IE will be downloaded and installed, meaning that the files required for Outlook connection, Media Player integration etc. are not installed.

To install Internet Explorer, you need to install WINE and cabextract packages. You can either go to your package manager to search and install, or you can simply issue the command urpmi wine cabextract from the terminal as a root user. When done, head over to the IEs4Linux download page and download the latest program version. Assuming that you have downloaded the file, named ies4linux-2.99.tar.gz, to your /home/user_name/downloads folder, here is what you need to do:

Open up a terminal, switch to your download directory: cd /home/user_name/downloads
Extract the tar.gz archive: tar -zxvf ies4linux-2.99.tar.gz (replace the filename to the one you have downloaded)
Change to the directory tar that has inflated the contents: cd ies4linux-*
Run the program: ./ies4linux

This process will install Internet Explorer 6 on your computer. To run Internet Explorer 7, you need to “hack” the program by making the program work with the IE 7 engine, rather than the IE 6 engine, but not “realize” it.

The problems with the IE 7 configuration are Javascript: alert, Ctrl + F (Find) dialogs and proxy settings. Javascript and Find dialogs are due to WINE’s limitations. For proxy, here is how to overcome it:

Run the program with the hack option: ./ies4linux --hack-ie7-proxy-settings
During the installation IE 6 will open. Go to the proxy settings and set them as necessary.
Close IE 6 and the installation will proceed. All the proxy configuration you have made will be carried to IE 7.

Conclusion

Things are fine with IEs4Linux running IE 6. However, Outlook Web Access (OWA) performs as poorly as in its native Internet Explorer running on Windows. The screen flickers, folder management crashes the program and the like. There are also many other annoying things, but most of those have nothing to do with IEs4Linux, mainly due to the limitations of Internet Explorer and the compatibility of websites.