[vox-tech] Questions on Using Wine

[Peter Jay Salzman]

On Thu 08 Apr 04, 10:17 PM, Ken Bloom <kabloom@ucdavis.edu> said:
> 
> On 2004.04.08 21:27, Roger & Jeanne Hanson wrote:
> >I am running Mandrake 9.2 on a Toshiba 335CDS laptop. I was interested in
> >
> >running a windows program with wine which I understand was included in my
> >
> >Mandrake distribution. Using rpmdrake I installed the package that came  
> >on
> >an
> >
> >accompanying CD. However, I am at a loss as to what I do next. I did a
> >search
> >
> >for "wine" and all I come up with is the following. In going into these
> >
> >directories I fail to see anything that is executable. Being a real
> >"Newbie" I
> >
> >don't quite know what I am missing (or what I am doing for that matter).
> >
> >[root@localhost /]# find / -name wine
> >/etc/rc.d/init.d/wine
> >/etc/wine
> >/var/lib/wine
> >/var/lock/subsys/wine
> >/usr/share/wine
> >/usr/bin/wine
> >/usr/lib/wine
> >[root@localhost /]#
> >
> >What action do I need to take to actually run a windows program under
> >wine. I am really lost.
> 
> Executable programs generally live in a bin/ directory or an sbin/  
> directory.

executables generally live in:

/bin               [3] [4]
/sbin              [1] [5]
/usr/bin           [3] [4]
/usr/sbin          [1] [5]

and also

/usr/local/bin     [2] [3]
/usr/local/sbin    [1] [2]


[1]: sbin is used for "system adminy" type programs like hdparm,
setserial, useradd, and halt.

[2]: local is used by the system administrator.  it should not be
touched by your operating system.  for example, if you want to install
wine from source, it would go under /usr/local.  however, if wine is
provided to you by your operating system (debian, gentoo, redhat, etc),
it would go under /usr.

[3]: bin is used for "non-system adminy" programs like ls, find, X
stuff, opera, nethack, etc.

[4] the executables that go into bin are considered to the executables
you can't do without.  they are baseline.  so, ls, needed on every unix
machine, is in /bin, as is chmod, chown and gzip.

[5] usr is for executables that are not necessary for the system to run.
things like X, gimp, and strings, which are not necessary for a system,
will be in a directory with "usr" in the pathname.


> In this case, /usr/bin/wine is the executable. The /usr/bin  
> directory is one of the directories in your search path (the $PATH  
> environment variable), so if you just type "wine", /usr/bin is one of the  
> directories that Linux will search looking for that program.

do:  "man which", or search the archives.  i recall we had a thread that
compared which, locate, find, and whatis some years ago.

> Wine is a somewhat difficult program to use - you need to write out a  
> configuarion file that (among other things) maps directories to windows  
> hard drives, and maps your printers to LPT: ports.

ken, i never had to do this.  i guess the factory defaults were good
enough.  everything seems to just install under ~/Transgaming, which is
considered to be the C drive.  if i ever wanted a D drive, i'd have to
fiddle with the config file.  but it ships with good defaults.

as for mapping LPT ports, i've never got a printer to work under wine,
so perhaps i should look into this!

> After you finish all of this, then you can run "wine c:\\windows\\notepad. 
> exe" or "wine /mnt/windows/windows/notepad.exe" and with a lot of luck and  
> prayer you'll see the windows notepad appear on your screen.
 
maybe wine has changed since i last used it (i've been using winex for
the past couple of years), but all i need to do is:

cd ~/Transgaming
winex windows/notepad.exe

and it usually works pretty well.

> Wine doesn't work with all programs reliably, so be forewarned.

yes, wine itself doesn't support direct-x.  just enough to get half life
working.  winex is focusing on direct-x and CD copy protection (which is
what makes it non-free, since they have to sign NDAs).

one very nice use of wine is to run executable flash movies.  works like
a charm.

macromedia is *currently* investigating flash mx support (yeah, the
creating tool, not the viewer) with wine.  ooooohhhh yeeeeeaaahhhhhhh..

> I had my  
> installation of maxplus (which I have to run under WINE) break unexpectedly 
> after it had been working well for a month or two. I'm thinking that it  
> broke around the time I installed linux kernel 2.6, but the symptoms don't  
> look like they relate to the kernel at all.

that blows.  it's kind hard to tell what causes that.  i assume you
searched winehq for breakage under 2.6?

pete

-- 
Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.  -- Albert Einstein
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