Run Windows Apps in Linux with Wine 1.0
Friday, 20 June 2008
No matter how easy Linux distributions make it for newcomers to install and use a free, open-source operating system, nearly everyone has at least one program that only works in Windows. Wine, a free Windows compatibility tool for Linux (and other Intel-based systems), aims to make those programs run without too much cross-system trickery. If you can"t get around needing to open true Microsoft Office files, Adobe Photoshop, or your addictive game of choice on your Linux desktop, Wine is for you. With Wine"s stable 1.0 version just released, it"s a good time to check out this quietly awesome app. Let"s get a few Windows applications running in Linux.
Good question—luckily, there"s probably an answer. The Wine AppDB lists all the programs that run and don"t run under Wine, and to what degrees. You"ll see rankings randing from "Platinum" (runs pretty much flawlessly) to "Bronze" (some functions may not work at all, but otherwise runs) to "Garbage" (don"t bother). In general, any apps that rely on other Windows apps or functions, or interact with the Windows desktop, won"t work as well, if at all. That means Adam"s super-useful Texter app doesn"t work in Wine, for example. The big wins for Wine are Microsoft Office viewers (and, in some cases, full applications) up through 2003 versions, Adobe Photoshop CS2, and many games, including World of Warcraft. You can even get iTunes playing and purchasing music, but no iPod syncing (yet). Assuming you"ve got something you want to try out, let"s get started.
Install and configure Wine Most Linux distributions have Wine available in their repositories, but usually a bit out of date. You can grab an easy-install package or repository instructions at Wine"s download site. (Mac users with Intel processors should check out Darwine, which keeps up with the official Wine releases. Here"s a guide to setting it up).Wine usually installs itself, creates a .wine folder in your home directory, and uses that as a pretend "C:/" drive to place your applications and needed files in. If not, enter winecfg into a terminal and it"ll do the work and bring up its configuration screen.
Head first to the "Desktop Integration" tab. If you want your Wine/Windows apps to treat the "Desktop" or "My Documents" save locations the same as your Linux desktop or documents folders, change the values to point at the right locations. Head next to "Drives," where a click on "Autodetect" should set up a group of virtual drives for your Wine apps (your home folder becomes "H:" for example, and folders inside your .wine folder become other drives). You can click on "Sound" to see if Wine is picking up your Linux driver well enough. That should be good enough for now—let"s install our first app.
All three of Microsoft"s major Office creator tools—Word, Excel, and PowerPoint—have free "viewers" that let anyone without a full Office suite open and copy data from Office documents. All three of the 2003 versions happen to run great in Wine, making them pretty helpful to anyone who simply needs to occasionally see or copy from a document or spreadsheet with tricky formatting. Grab a copy of the Word, Excel, or PowerPoint viewers, then open a terminal and change directories (cd to wherever you put the .exe installer file).
Now enter wine whatever.exe (or, in certain systems, right-click on the .exe file and choose to launch with Wine) and you"ll get a familiar-looking prompt to install, followed by a license agreement, then a quick installation and goodbye. Head to Wine->Programs in your system menu, or browse to the viewer in your pretend "Program Files" folder (manually or by choosing "Browse C: Drive" from the Wine menu).
You should see your viewer program, and it will likely launch with no problems. If you wanted to go further into full Office apps, you can either take your chances with straight-up Wine—where you might see "Platinum" and "Garbage" reports for the same Office version on the same Linux system—or invest in a Crossover product for about $40, which gives near-guaranteed sucess with Office apps.
You can change which version of Windows Wine attempts to recreate in the "Applications" tab in configuration. Browse and select an app, choose a Windows version in the lower-right, then add any DLLs you might need or graphics settings that need tweaking in the "Libraries" and "Graphics" tabs. Programs like AutoStitch, Foobar2000, and even Windows automation tool AutoHotKey install just fine with no tweaking, but your mileage may vary. If you do run into errors regarding missing DLLs/libraries, try installing the winetricks script, which automatically seeks out commonly missing .dlls for installed programs.
The big caveat of Wine is that there are so many Windows programs out there, and myriad ways they can go wrong on installation or launch. A catch-all installation and troubleshooting method doesn"t exist; you"re best off looking in the AppDB, Googling your troublesome app with "wine linux" after it, or just tinkering with your Wine settings until you find out what"s causing the bug.
Taking Wine further Once you"ve gotten started using your apps in Wine, it"s time to make them a better fit with your desktop. Here"s a few tips and suggestions on making Wine an almost invisible layer in Linux: Keep Linux file associations: There"s probably no need to install a Windows-based PDF reader just because another Wine app wants access to one, so you need to teach Wine to reach for what you"ve already got available. Check out this wiki entry for details on choosing which apps open which files in your pseudo-Windows environment.
De-uglify the interface: Wine takes an OS-neutral, Java-like approach to drawing buttons, tabs, and other implements on its windows, but wouldn"t it be nice if they actually meshed with your Linux desktop? The Tombuntu blog shows you how, from a simple text file copy to more extensive (and memory-eating) tweaks (Original post). Uninstall programs: Got a bit too much clutter in your Wine menu after a few try-outs? Simply type uninstaller into a terminal, and you"ll get a simple click-and-choose interface that activates the familiar Windows uninstaller ("Are you sure you"d like to ..."). If you"re looking for more help on customizing and running Wine apps, I"d recommend, in addition to Wine"s own wiki, these two sites:
Frank"s Corner: A one-man Wine guru, Frank offers up specific hints and tricks on wrangling Office, multimedia, gaming, and other Windows apps. Slightly behind-the-times, but his advice still holds. Ubuntu"s Wine wiki page: For users of the orange-tinted distro, a few handy how-tos and guidance on what can and can"t be done with Wine.Veteran Wine users, what favorite apps have you rescued from other-partition exile? Newcomers, what other resources can you point out for getting more Windows apps running ever-so-smoothly in Linux? Share and share alike in the comments.
Kevin Purdy, associate editor at Lifehacker, waits with bated breath for iTunes to get iPod support in Wine. His weekly feature, Open Sourcery, appears Fridays on Lifehacker.
Make Your Own Feed Reader with Google Spreadsheets
Thursday, 12 June 2008
The Digital Inspiration blog shows how to create your own web page or embeddable widget that shows live feeds from your choice of web sites. Using Google Spreadsheets" publishing function, it takes only a little bit of cell hacking to pull in and customize feed items, and you simply publish only the cells containing the feed links when you"re done. Helpful for start pages, personal web pages, or creating a reader for only the top feeds you need to stay on top of. Update: Now with a live iFrame of my sample reader.
Free Wi-Fi at 17,000 AT&T Hotspots Official
Thursday, 08 May 2008
MacRumors is reporting that AT&T"s web site has officially confirmed free access to over 17,000 Wi-Fi hotspots for iPhone users, including Starbucks and Barnes and Noble. That means that with a little know-how, anyone can get free Wi-Fi access at any AT&T hotspot from your laptop, no iPhone needed. If you"ve been using this trick since we first posted it, let"s hear how it"s working in the comments.
Put Your Second Ethernet Port to Good Use
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Web site Linux.com offers a few tips for taking advantage of the second Ethernet port on the back of your computer. For example, in Linux you can bond your two ports for load balancing and fault tolerance. ...bonding [combines] both of the computer"s interfaces into a single interface.... The OS can alternate which interface it uses to send traffic, or it can gracefully fail over between them in the event of a problem. You can even use it to balance your traffic between multiple wide area network (WAN) connections, such as DSL and cable, or dialup and your next door neighbor"s unsecured Wi-Fi.
Most new computers come packed with a perplexing abundance of Ethernet ports—that is to say, two. But with a little know-how on your Linux box, you can get a whole lot more from them. The article focuses on Linux, but if you"ve found a use for your second Ethernet port on your Windows or Mac PC, let"s hear about it in the comments.
What can you do with a second Ethernet port? [Linux.com]
Determine If Your ISP is Throttling Your BitTorrent Traffic
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
Web application Glasnost simulates BitTorrent downloads on your computer to determine whether or not your internet service provider (ISP) is throttling your BitTorrent transfers. It does so by measuring the difference between your regular download speed and your BitTorrent download speed, testing against different ports and other variables to get a better idea of what exactly is being throttled. The tool is aggregating the results of the test, which the site is publishing to encourage greater transparency among ISPs. If your ISP turns out to be throttling your BitTorrent traffic, you can still avoid the throttling if you know the right tricks.
How to Make Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3
Wednesday, 07 May 2008
The CyberNet tech blog digs into Smart Bookmarks, one of the neatest new features in the upcoming Firefox 3, and pulls out a how-to guide to compiling your own iTunes-like collections. Using a wide set of parameters, you can add bookmarks that monitor sites, your own browsing habits, and more. A few examples of what you can bookmark after the jump.
Create a new bookmark the way you normally would in Firefox, then modify the "Location" field using Mozilla"s parameters list, or take a cue from these CyberNet examples:15 Most Visited Bookmarks:
place:queryType=1&sort=8&maxResults=1510 Most Visited Sites with "CyberNet" in them:
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=10&terms=cybernet5 Most Visited Sites at the cybernetnews.com Domain:
place:queryType=0&sort=8&maxResults=5&domain=cybernetnews.comHit the link below for more parameters and query examples. Got any pre-compiled Smart Bookmarks you want to share with your fellow Firefox fans? Post the code in the comments.
CyberNotes: Create Your Own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3 [CyberNet]
How to Buy a Digital Camera and Ignore Expensive Hype
Tuesday, 06 May 2008
Wired"s How-To Wiki takes a group-edited look at the digital camera market and how a newcomer (or, more likely at this point, a buyer replacing their first, outdated model) can parse all the features and statistics to come out with a reasonable bargain. Their advice on megapixels, one of the most hyped features on any camera, is pretty reasonable:Then there is the fact that even a 3.1 MP camera, which is obsolete for non-camphones, can take a perfectly passable 6" by 8" photograph. The current standard for the low end of consumer digital cameras is between 5 and 7 megapixels, allowing flawless 8x10s. Really, when any camera you buy lets you print 8x10s, do more mexapixels matter?
Not everyone"s going to be looking for a bargain camera, of course, but Wired"s wiki is a good read for anyone trying to reason out the difference between two models they"re considering, or just figure out what"s important to them. Photo by David Boyle.
Buy a Digital Camera [Wired How-To Wiki]
How to Thief-Proof Your Laptop
Monday, 05 May 2008
PC World magazine rounds up eight tips to stop thieves from stealing your laptop, the most obvious-yet-effective of which is simply locking it up. Apart from their suggestion that you encrypt your hard drive (we"d recommend the cross-platform TrueCrypt for that), all of their suggestions require you to throw down a bit of cash. If you"re not up to spending any money but you still want to beef up your laptop security, hit the jump for a look at a few no-cost solutions for guarding your laptop against thieves.
Windows freeware app LaptopLock integrates with the LaptopLock web site to bring added file security, stolen notifications, and tracking of your stolen laptop. LaptopLock isn"t much of an alarm system, but you may be glad you installed it if your laptop is ever stolen.Turn your motion-sensing MacBook into an FTP-backed-up security camera using MacBook alarm system iAlertU (original post).
Turn your Windows laptop-with-webcam into a motion-sensing security camera with freeware application Yawcam (original post).Windows-only Laptop Alarm (original post) locks your computer and monitors for suspicious behavior, sounding an alarm if someone tries using or unplugging your computer, for example.
If you"ve got a good set of methods for protecting your laptop from thieves—both before and after a theft has taken place—let"s hear about it in the comments.
Stop Thieves From Stealing Your Laptop [PCWorld]Easily De-Seed Your Watermelon
Monday, 05 May 2008
A user from DIY web site Instructables details how to cut a watermelon to easily remove most of the seeds so you don"t have to endure the familiar seed-spitting routine. The key is cutting the watermelon along the seed line, allowing you to simply scrape off the majority of seeds. Of course this is a lot more complicated than just cutting your watermelon in half, grabbing a spoon, and digging in, but if you can"t stand the seeds and you don"t want to pay more for lesser quality, more expensive seedless watermelon, this little melon hack may be worth a try. Now you know how to cut a mango, a pineapple, and a watermelon with confidence.
How to remove most of the seeds when cutting up a watermelon [Instructables]
FrameByFrame Makes Stop-Motion Videos a Breeze
Sunday, 04 May 2008
Mac OS X only: Make your own stop-motion animation videos using your iSight webcam or connected video camera with freeware application FrameByFrame. I showed you how to document your parties with a freeware time-lapse application, and now FrameByFrame is taking care of the stop-motion video angle. It"s easy to use, and the results—Lego samples of which you can see on the download page—are very impressive. FrameByFrame is freeware, Mac OS X only.
FrameByFrame [via Cool OSX Apps]
� 2007 Adam Tomasi
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