WINE and Mandrake 10.0

[zenarcher 0]

I have installed WINE found in my Mandrake 10.0 distribution. Mandrake also required a library to be installed at the same time and I installed XWine GUI.

 

That's about as far as I understand how to proceed. I have a Windows program I wish to install for Geocaching, the Geocaching Swiss Army Knife, or known as GSAK. It is supposed to work under Linux, using WINE.

 

I only have Mandrake 10.0 on my hard drive and do not run Windows with this box.

 

Could anyone provide me a simple step-by-step procedure for configuration of WINE and how I go about installing and using the Windows program? Since I'm really new to Linux, the explanation has to be simple.

 

Thanks in advance!

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

Quote:

It is supposed to work under Linux, using WINE.

Well the website states that it is reported to work under Wine, but it is not supported by the maker of the application. What this means is that some have gotten it to work, probably with some trial and error. What is missing is what version of Wine that it is reported to work with and the method of getting it to work. A quick google search did not reveal too much, but I can look further.

I assume that the version of Wine you installed, was the Mandrake version that came on the install cd?

There are no quick and simple guides that I have found on Wine. It takes a little getting used to. I have messed with it for some time and getting many Windows based apps. to work on it is difficult.

A good site to get an idea of the complexity of Wine is Frank's Corner.

Are there any other Windows based apps. that you are looking to run under Wine?

[Dapper Dan 0]

Hi zenarcher, and welcome!

 

You'll want to first open a terminal, If you're using Mdk 10, konsole is good. You'll need to get into the directory where this Windows program is located. Likely it is in your /home directory. If so, you're already there when opening a terminal. If not, you'll have to get into the directory where it is located. Let's also say as an example you downloaded the file into "Documents."

 

From the command line go:

 

cd Documents [enter]

 

Now you are in the Documents file or folder or directory. Remember, "cd" means change directory.

 

The program you are wanting to run is likely in a folder of its own. Let's say it's in, "GSAK." Go..

 

cd GSAK [enter]

 

Then...

 

ls [enter]

 

ls is the command that lists what is in the directory where you are. Keep doing cd into directories and doing ls to see what is in those directories until you find the executable or .exe which will start the program. Once you find it, go:

 

wine theprogram'sname.exe [enter]

 

Ad see if wine opens it.

 

 

[zenarcher 0]

Thanks to both of you for the tips and information. Yes, I did install the version of Wine which on the Mandrake 10.0 disks.

 

Right off, I can't think of any other programs I'll probably want to use with Wine. I'm a pretty avid geocacher and the program is a big help with geocaching. If this were a perfect world, I'd probably like my Magellan GPS map program to run under Wine, as well, but I'm not expecting that to happen.

 

Overall, I've found a Linux program for about everything I've ever used in MS...and I've been pretty competent with M$ since DOS 5.0 through Windows XP.

 

If all else fails, I have my shop computer, which I use since I have a computer repair business, and have two hard drives...with Linux and Windows XP installed...so could put the programs there. I also have my wife's computer with Windows XP, since she absolutely refuses to learn anything about Linux. Even though she uses my computer to play Linux games. I have the three computers on a network and the Mandrake 10.0 has really been the easiest one for me to use and the one which installed without any problems.

 

Again, thanks so much for the assistance. I was thinking I had to create some sort of C drive area on the hard drive, where I would install Windows programs, so this looks easier than I had anticipated...

 

Thanks,

zenarcher

[Dapper Dan 0]

You're actually right about the fake Windows area. After you install the program using wine, look in your /home directory, (..that is, your own directory that resides in /home.), and find .wine. From the command line, go:

 

ls -a [enter]

 

You can also "see" .wine with konqueror or nautilus file browsers. As with Windows, there is an option you will have to enable in order to see it. In Linux, a file with a dot before it is hidden.

 

So since you know its there, you could from the command line go:

 

konqueror ~/.wine/fake_windows/Program\ Files/

 

Look for your programs there. That's where wine will likely install them to. Once you're in the same directory where your program's corresponding .exe file is located, attempt running it by:

 

wine nameofprogram.exe,

 

Wine will surprise you! Some programs you'd think that would run without problems won't work satisfactorily, and others you give no chance of working will work flawlessly!

[zenarcher 0]

Thanks for that info, Dan....I opened Konqueror and found the .wine folder. It is home/zenarcher/.wine There are 2 files there....config and config.bak at this time.

 

I am not exactly sure if downloading and installing is different than with Windows...Let's say I download a Windows program....should I save it to the desktop....then try to run the install...and install it to the .wine folder???

 

Regards,

zenarcher

[Dapper Dan 0]

You can download it to anywhere you want, though most browsers by default will download it to your home/zenarcher directory.

 

After downloading say, widget.exe, open a terminal and become root, that is...

 

su [enter]

It will ask for password, then enter it.

 

You are now Super User. Just go...

 

wine widget.exe [enter]

 

And wine will likely install widget to .wine/fake_windows/Program\ Files/ or just .wine/fake_windows.

 

Go into the widget directory by going something like:

 

cd .wine/fake_windows/Program\ Files/widget [enter]

 

then...

 

ls [enter]

 

...to see the contents of the widget directory and look for the corresponding .exe which will run the program. Go...

 

wine widget.exe [enter]

 

And see what wine does with it. If you know the path to the executable you could even go something like...

 

wine ~/.wine/fake_windows/Program\ Files/widget/widget.exe [enter]

 

(By the way, ~/ is just a kind of short way of going /home/zenarcher.)

 

And you should be able to run it that way too. Let's say it runs satisfactorily, and you plan to use it often. You can now create a custom desktop icon by right clicking on your desktop. You'll figure it out after that. then for the command, put in the same as above.

[zenarcher 0]

Thanks again, Dan. I have also printed out your responses, so I will have them for future tries. I also installed XWine, so I should have the GUI to use, once I have this all figured out and working. I'll sure give all this a try and see how it goes. Again, I sincerely appreciate all your patient assistance..

 

zenarcher

[zenarcher 0]

I gave Dan's directions a try, but apparently I'm not doing something right. I downloaded the GSAK program to home/zenarcher and can see it there. I opened a terminal, logged in as su and found the GSAK.exe file. I did the wine GSAKXXX.exe and get the following error. Could not find wine config [Drive X] entry for current working directory /home/zenarcher; starting in Windows directory.

 

Looking in hidden files in home/zenarcher, I find .wine and .xwine. I am also able to open the XWine GUI and see everything there. Guess I need a bit more help. I did not find anything like .wine/fake_windows/Program\Files. When I open XWine, I do see what looks like a Windows tree with a C: drive and others....Hope I'm clear enough on that.

 

zenarcher

[Dapper Dan 0]

I've never used Xwine so, I'm not sure how they set up their file structure. That I showed you would be for regular Wine. I've never seen that error before. That was a Wine error or an Xwine error? It alsmost sounds as if it can't find the .exe you downloaded. This often happens when you accidently type it in wrong. Unlike Windows, Linux is case sensitive.

 

If you cd to the directory where the file is downloaded, and do...

 

wine GSAK.exe [enter]

 

It should do at least something. Is it possible you aren't in the same directory where the file resides?

 

zenarcher, give me a link to this program and I'll download it and do some experimenting with it. Between the two of us, we might be able to come up with something that works...

[Dapper Dan 0]

Well I just found it and downloaded GSAK. It installed flawlessly under regular Wine, but has serious issues running. They are such that you cannot even terminate the program with xkill. You have to do a Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to start your DE over again.

 

I also tried it with the latest version of Cedega, Transgaming's version of Wine, and had the same results. Using Transgaming's "Point2Play" however, I dropped back to their older Winex3.0, and it seem to work very well! I could even cruise my Linux files with it.

 

I'm not real sure how this program works, but all the options and buttons seemed to work correctly under Winex3.0

 

Cedega and Winex is available at Transgaming.com but it cost a few dollars a month in "club fees," however the minimum amount of time you have to be a member is only three months.

[zenarcher 0]

Thanks for all the help, Dan...and for even trying GSAK. Seems from your experience, GSAK isn't going to be a Wine friendly program, so for now, I think I will just leave the program on my wife's system and put it on the Windows drive of my workbench box. That should suffice. I'll probably be running across other geocaching software which will work with Wine. It's not a serious problem and I'm thrilled with my first experiences with Linux. I just have weird hobbies and weird software. It would be great to see some Linux software related to Geocaching, as it's becoming a very big hobby. I also do some hobby ghost hunting, so video and audio software are used extensively.

 

zenarcher

[zenarcher 0]

Just one question, Dan. Do I have to create this fake_windows/Program\Files/ area? I don't see anything like that in my home/zenarcher area.

 

The error I receieved was in Wine....not XWine....and was when I tried to run wine GSAKXXX.exe as SU in the terminal on the downloaded but not extracted program. When I did the wine GSAKXXX.exe....the program came up like it was installing...and at the end of the installation, I got the error I explained..I could not find anywhere that the program had installed.

 

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

I just installed the latest version of Wine on Mandrake 10.1 (version 20041019)from Sourceforge (rpm). When I ran wine without any arguments, it created the folders in my .wine directory.

 

It looks like Wine now does this for you automagically. I'm used to needing to run the old winesetuptk to do this (obviously from older versions pre May 2004).

 

The folders that you should see in the .wine directory would be;

 

dosdevices

 

drive_c

 

If you do this from root user, then the directories are created in /root/.wine.

 

If you run it as regular user, then you will see the directory structure in /home/user/.wine.

 

The drive_c directory contains all the regular windows folders that you would expect to see, which is your fake wine drive.

 

I just installed the GSAK program and it works fine from what I can tell, however, it does not like the file structure totally and does not link to the browser correctly.

 

Of course, I installed dcom98 and the windows scripting programs, which may explain some of this. These are required for some other win apps, such as Dreamweaver MX and Nero.

 

The upshoot of this is that while it works fine for me (possibly due to recent changes made in Wine), it still will not probably do all that it should. I get no freezing on closing and such.

 

I use Crossover Office, which costs, but runs Office 2000 and other apps quite well.

 

Acrobat Reader 5.1 runs well and even put an icon on the desktop for me.

 

Interesting, some changes seem to have been made, but clearly not enough to install and run most win apps easily.

[zenarcher 0]

Well, that may be my solution to the problem, as I intend to purchase Mandrake 10.1 as soon as it is available...I think that's a couple of weeks from now, so will have the new version of Wine and it will probably create everything automatically. Thanks so much for the help and information. It really inspires me to get the new Mandrake as soon as it's available. I plan on getting the 6 CD version.

 

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

Just to clarify, I am running Mandrake Community 10.1.

 

You can install the new Wine version on your current Mandrake install from Sourceforge

 

Your current version should have done the same thing, if it is a post May 2004 version.

 

If you choose the new version, I suggest un-installing the old version of wine and then install the newer one. Mandrake will use the libwine files from your current version that came with Mandrake.

 

You may want to try the latest version on your system to see how it works. There should be no difference between wine running in 10 vs. 10.1. Again, I modified my install with dcom and the windows scripting files which may explain some of the reasons why it is working better on my system. This app. allows the install to proceed and may have dll files that GSAK needed. Just my take on it.

[Dapper Dan 0]

Hi all. Just saw this from another board I visit, and it is Cedega/Winex I used to get this program running satisfactorily.