What is Wine (not the alcohol)?

you mean the windows emulator for linux?

WINE Is Not an Emulator, it is a clone of the Win32 API
See my post here:
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?whichpage=2&pagesize=20&topic_id=64111

Wine is not an emulator . Why don''t you look at their webpage and see ?

[Resist Windows XP''s Invasive Production Activation Technology!]

Run a search like Linux wine and you should get several sites
including the wine site to fully answer any ?''s. The over all
idea is that it subsitutes the windows functions that window
programs use with linux compatable functions. The program
calls function winfunc1A and wine has a function of the same
name that preforms the same task or fakes the same task. If all
goes well you can run a windows app under linux through wine.
I think they just started a WineX where it has better DirectX
support to run games better. There is like a 5$ a month fee or
something. Its an interesting program. One game that runs
well now is Half-Life. Software mode is easy, using OpenGL
support is abit tricky.