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I discovered this via an LXer newsfeed on Linuxquestions.org. Most Linux users should know about the Wine project and about the Cedega project and even about CrossOver Office – the aim of these programs is to run Windows programs, games and office type programs easily on Linux. There are problems with each program – Wine can be difficult to get working well (often needing tweaks even to just install it), Cedega took Wine and turned it into a “pay for” program and gave nothing back to Wine and Crossover Office is another program you have to pay for, though they do give their programming back to the Wine project. If you just want to play games, until now, Cedega is the one you had to go for. And if you wanted to pretty much guarantee that you could play games and run office programs, you had to buy both Cedega and CrossOver office. And finally, if you have a lot of time on your hands and don’t want to pay money for a product, you could spend time with the original Wine.

That is, until now. PlayOnLinux is a Wine frontend created with Bash and Python. This means that it is runnable on any recent (or up to date) Linux distro. It provides pre-scripted installs for many Windows programs and Windows games. In fact, I installed LucasArts‘ Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast with it and it plays flawlessly and installs in the quickest time ever. I chose this game for two reasons: the first is that I know it installs with both vanilla Wine and with Cedega. The second reason is that it’s a lot of fun to play

From the Presentation page:

PlayOnLinux is a piece of sofware which allow you to install and use easily numerous games and softwares designed to run with Microsoft®’s Windows®.
Indeed, currently, still few games are compatible with GNU/Linux, and it could be a factor preventing from migrate to this system. PlayOnLinux brings an accessible and efficient solution to this problem, cost-free and rescpetful of the free softwares.
Get rid of Windows®’ constraints! But continue to play!

There really isn’t a lot to say about this program.  If you need a way to run Windows games or programs, don’t want to spend money and don’t want to have to spend time tweaking and configuring, then this is a program to add to your toolbox.  It is pretty much only limited by Wine’s limitations.  It allows you to run multiple versions of Wine, to install programs with only a few clicks and, because it’s distro independent, to carry your configuration settings to any PC you have Linux installed on.

The program is at version 3.0.1 at this time of writing and is already very polished.  Currently, only documentation for developers is provided, though user documentation is coming, they also provide distro specific packages and installations.  Help is provided through their forums, though I would be very surprised if a wiki isn’t produced at some time.  The program has it’s own IRC client so you can help and be helped without using your browser.  As it’s open source and cost free, installation
is very pain free and you are welcome to help it progress by either testing and bug reporting or by creating plugin scripts or by checking the code and suggesting improvements.