Installing Internet Explorer was never so easy with IEs4linux, a script that does all the work for you. Download and try it now: http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/.

It's really easy, but here's how I did it. Note that the instructions are also on the website of IEs4linux.

First, make sure the required software is installed:

• wine: very obvious, you need this to run the installed IEs;
• cabextract: required to unpack the CAB files that get downloaded.

You don't need to backup your current ~/.wine/ directory, as IEs4linux created a separate profile for the IEs. If you do happen to need IE for your other apps, it's best to start with a clean profile, as a profile with other apps installed might fail the install of IEs. Basically, you have to run IEs4linux to install the IEs you want, then either symlink, or rename the ~/.ies4linux/ directory to ~/.wine/.

When the necessary software is in place, download the script somewhere:

# cd ~/tmp/
# wget -c http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
# tar xzf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
# cd ies4linux-*
# ./ies4linux

Now, follow the on-screen instructions. I chose not to install IE 5.0 and 5.5, selected EN-US as the language, and had Flash 9 to be installed. And that's about it.

For Gnome and KDE, a desktop shortcut is automatically created. A bit unfortunate is that it points to a script in ~/bin/ie6, which is a bit stupid when you want a bit of a clean home directory.
So basically I removed the script (which is a symlink anyway) and bin dir, and edited the desktop shortcut to point to ~/.ies4linux/bin/ie6.