Migrating from Windows to Wine - The Third Party Tools
(Page 2 of 4 )
Third-party tools vary from a simple script to full programs in and of themselves. There are quite a number of them. Crossover is a tool that provides additions to wine, such as new patches and a certain extending of its abilities. Bordeaux for Linux is a tool that will help you install applications like Office 2007, Photoshop CS2 and so on.
Q4Wine is an application designed to help you install wine applications and manage wine prefixes. For example, it lets you mount your image CD/DVD for your games. WineBot is a "Windows application installer automation tool for Wine Unix environment." Then there is WineXS, "a fun project...made to make using Wine a little easier."
Today we will observe and use three others. Winetricks is a script tool used to install various additions to wine and to configure some aspects of it. Dan Kegel, who is a Wine developer, maintains it. Just download it and start it up by calling from the terminal:
sh winetricks
As you can see, it is easy to use. Just start it, select what you need and push the OK button. Once the terminal finishes, you can start the application from the Wine menu or, if it is a setting, it can immediately be applied. For this, there is support available from WineHq.
WineDoors is another great tool. It makes much of this process simple. The download page contains versions for different Linux distributions, so the installation is nothing out of the ordinary. Once done, the program will put a shortcut inside the Wine menu.
It is as straightforward as possible. Just follow the instructions, download, install and use.
A third tool worth looking at is PlayOnLinux. The download page is just as varied as the previous ones. While the previous application also made it possible to install a couple of games designed for Windows, this tool handles this task well. The database available is just endless, and if your favorite piece of software is not on the list, you can create a new installation process and add it to the database. In this way, the community can further expand the application.
The real power of this approach is that each application has its own virtual drive, thus separating one from another and avoiding possible conflicts between them. When you install Wine using the default procedure, all the settings will be entered in the .wine folder of your home directory. So for instance, if one application runs only under Windows Vista and another under XP, you will need to make a switch each time you want to use one of them.
With PlayOnLinux, the settings are individual and you have nothing to do other than click on the start to use the application or play the game.
Applications are split into categories to help you find the one you need more easily.
The installation is just as simple as choosing which drive the CD/DVD is in, choosing the setup to start, waiting for the installation to complete and choosing where you want your shortcuts.
