[ATM] OT: Wine hints (was: Re: Telescope design -- Linux software)

[simo <simo@simoivanov.com>]

Wine isn't an emulator; rather, it is a re-implementation of windows on
Linux. As such, when it works, it works with speed close to that of
windows -- at least it does for me. When it doesn't, it doesn't work
just like windows ;)

Wine users maintain a large online database of "supported" software and
hints on how to run it. It is here http://appdb.winehq.org, and it is
very helpful. What I have found immensely useful is the coverage of the
services and software provided by Windows itself to third-party
applications -- just about every aspect of Windows that your program may
need is covered there, many times with useful workarounds.

Besides, your application may already be there, and if it is not, please
consider adding it for the later generations. I have successfully used
the aberrator, which is listed there ;)

Wine can pretend to be one of several flavors of Windows. You can
specify what wine reports to each program (and specify other options) by
running the winecfg command from the shell. This helps in some cases
(e.g. I have applications which run fine on wine as win98, but fail on
wine as win2k or winXP because they expect some extra functionality from
the newer windows versions, which is still missing from wine).

Sometimes, when Wine does not have some extra OS feature, one can supply
the windows library (.dll file) and make it work. Which native libraries
to load, and which applications to use them on is also specified in the
winecfg interface.

Finally, if you (like me) have trouble remembering where you installed
your Windows applications, there is the wine file manager, winefile,
which shows the (imaginary) windows file system as one would see it in
windows.

Michael Lindner wrote:
> Dominic-Luc Webb wrote:
>   
>> Maybe you could offer some basic tips to the list on obtaining
>> and running Wine.
>>     
>
> Certainly. Here's what I know, to the best of my knowledge (corrections 
> welcome).
>
> Wine is a windows emulator for Linux. It is completely free and you 
> don't need to have a copy of Windows to run it. Wine comes with most 
> newer Linux distributions. It's often installed by default, but you can 
> install it optionally if not. On Red Hat-like Linuxes you run
>
> 	sudo yum install wine
>
> and on Debian-based Linuxes (like Ubuntu, which I highly recommend) it's
>
> 	apt-get install wine
>
> If you don't have it, you can always find it at the Wine web site
>
> 	http://www.winehq.org/
>
> Once Wine is installed, you can run a Windows program by typing
>
> 	wine MyWonderfulCommand.exe
>
> (where "MyWonderfulCommand.exe" is the name of the file containing the 
> Windows program. Don't forget that Linux cares about the case of 
> characters in file names, even if Windows does not. There is also a Wine 
> kernel module that allows Windows programs to run "natively", like any 
> Linux command, without running "wine" explicitly.
>
> Wine keeps a virtual Windows "C drive" in ~/.wine/drive_c, which is 
> where you can look for Windows stuff you install under Wine but can't 
> remember where :-)
>
> Wine doesn't provide a complete Windows environment, and so not all 
> Windows programs will run under it, and not all features of the programs 
> that do run will necessarily work perfectly (for instance, sometimes 
> differences in drawing the screen make button labels get truncated under 
> Wine).
>
> Nevertheless, it make a large number of Windows ATM programs usable 
> under Linux. I have used it to run ATMOS, MODAS, OSLO, Aberrator, 
> diffract and Plop. Other programs, such as FigureXP don't seem to run 
> under it at all (although that may have changed since I last tried).
>
> For DOS programs, like Diagonal.exe, you need to run a Linux DOS 
> emulator. I use "dosbox", which works well. It can be installed like 
> Wine, above, or found at its web site
>
> 	http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/
>
> You invoke that like Wine
>
> 	dosbox DIAGONAL.EXE
>
> Hope this helps...
>
>   

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