What follows is a step by step guide to installing MT4 in Linux. We have used the excellent Ubuntu distribution for this task, but you can adapt your distribution easily. This also works on Gentoo for example.
Anyway ...
1) Install wine if it is not already installed.
Sudo apt-g
et install wine
When the wine is installed, you must configure it. It is pretty easy. As a normal user (Not Root!) Run winecfg from a terminal, and it should set itself up. If you want to do more configuration or tweaking, have a look around the tabs, but now we suggest keeping it as default.
2) From a valid Windows installation, copy all the fonts into your wine installation. It also assumes you told Ubuntu to mount your Windows partition at / windows.
cp / Windows / Windows / Fonts / * ~ /. wine / drive_c / windows / fonts /
3) Copy 2 needed DLL files from your valid Windows installation.
cp / windows/WINDOWS/system32/mfc4 * ~ / .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 /
4) Download mt4setup from your favorite broker or the broker's proposal rebatefx.com.
5) Install MT4.
wine mt4setup.exe
6) You should now have an icon on the desktop, and a working install of MT4 under Linux! Double-click it to start. Do not be alarmed if it takes a while to run first.
There are some small problems in the time of writing itself. This is expected when imitating software written for another platform. These problems may include (They do not happen to everyone), not being able to place limit or stop orders due to an invalid parameter error that is unable to change the width of trend lines and indicator lines, and in some event meta Editor will refuse to run without a copy of Internet Explorer 6 or better by being installed as well. Although it is not guaranteed to solve the problem, it is useful to have Internet Explorer installed on the web pages that insist on using it or to web page development.
Installing IE6 you can use the excellent ies4linux package. The following commands should have IE6 installed on your Linux machine.
sudo apt-get install cabextract
wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar xzvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
CD-ies4linux *
./ies4linux
So there you have it. Metatrader 4 working under Linux. Well, mostly;)
It is not perfect, but it is a workable solution if you trade by entering at market prices. It is certainly good news trading when an unexpected virus check or annoying Windows Update popup steals focus from the trading terminal losing you precious seconds which may mean all the difference between making a lot of money, or just a little bit. Even worse, you lose your chart setups or even your whole account to a virus or keylogger attack.
Good Luck Trading!
