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Okay, so i'm planning to do a dual boot on my Acer Aspire 4740G (Intel i3) Laptop. I'm planning on adding Ubuntu to it since I already have Windows 7 64 bit installed. My question is, I need to install my laptop drivers too on the ubuntu partition. however, i don't have much idea if it will be possible upon installing WineHQ since all the laptop drivers I have is in .exe format.

Thanks everyone.

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  • 1
    in addition to Super User, you might have more luck on ubuntuforums.org
    – lagerdalek
    Jun 23, 2010 at 4:35
  • Drivers run in kernel-mode and not user-mode so Wine will be useless for loading drivers. Sep 29, 2011 at 5:13

3 Answers 3

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Definitely will not work the way you want it to. Wine just implements the Win32 API, it does nothing for drivers that live in the kernel.

Chances are, though, that Ubuntu already has drivers for your hardware. Have you given it a try yet? Just because the driver CD that ships with your machine doesn't work on Ubuntu doesn't mean you're in trouble yet.

In fact, I did a quick search and it seems that the particular model of laptop you're buying is a great Linux machine that will be well supported in Ubuntu right out of the box -- you won't need to do anything.

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  • thank you very much. i haven't thought about having linux drivers for my machine. :D
    – Kim
    Jun 23, 2010 at 4:38
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No. You'll have to find equivalent drivers for Ubuntu. Wine cannot run Windows drivers on non-Windows platforms.

You probably won't need special drivers, though, unless you want to use some not-exactly-standard hardware features.

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Boot from the Ubuntu CD into the LiveCD Environment, and see if your devices are working. Wireless card and Video card drivers often don't work out of the box because they are proprietary and not open-source, but if you go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, the driver will be detected and installed (provided you are connected to the internet using the ethernet card).

Ubuntu Hardware Drivers Menu

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