Windows PortableApps under WINE

[mikeslr]

I'm still curious to know if Portable Wine is usable in a 64-bit Pup? David S.

Yes. I run Wine-Portable, from here, http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 245#989245 under Xenialpup64 and Tahrpup64. I think I've also run it under Slacko64 --but I'll boot into it and check.

Previously I ran under Xenialpup64 and Tahrpup64 a version of Wine-Portable I built using one of version2013's wine 2.16 pets. And before that I ran shinobar's original version, wine-portable-1.6.2-2 under Tahrpup64.

Remember, all wine-portables employ 32-bit versions of wine. In order to function under a 64-bit Puppy, you must load the appropriate 32-bit compatibility application and configure it (ldconfig). [32-bit compatibility applications are packaged as SFS. But, as I always run wine, I repackaged it as a pet and installed it. Needs about 500 Mbs if you're using a SaveFile].

Edit: I'm back after booting into Slacko64. The attached screenshot shows my loaded SFSes and Installed pets. Note that the 32-bit compatibility SFS is loaded and that wine-portable-0.1 has been "installed". The latter is how Puppies recognize wine-portable when you register them. [Hence, you can only use one version of wine-portable at a time, and must use PPM to uninstall any prior version as all are cataloged as "0.1"].

InfoCentral_portable is actually a pet which creates a menu entry under Wine_portable. . It functioned as expected. Some of the portable windows programs I "installed" to /mn/home/xp-apps ran. Some did not. Among them was a new version of Avidemux portable. This version ran from 64-bit "Ubuntu" Puppies, and older versions of Avidemux ran, IIRC, from Slacko64. I know it runs under Slacko 5.7.1. And Avidemux 2.6.8 runs under Slacko64. So, go figure. In other words, for a portable windows program to function all 'the stars must align' -- the PuppyOS, the 32-bit Compatibility layer, the version of wine, and the program.

Note, for Puppies which lack Rox-App Right-click options, Wine-portable can be registered by browsing into the Wine-portable folder and executing "Register".

mikesLr

[davids45]

G'day mikeslr,

Thanks for your report on Portable Wine being OK in (some) 64-bit Pups.

From Mike Walsh's post, I tried my existing 32-bit wine+programs links sfs in a Slacko64 and, with an sfs of the Slacko 32-bit compatibility libraries also loaded, I have my desired Wine programs running in a 64-bit Pup with minimal effort. Compared to trying to work out the 64-bit Wines which wasn't going down well, if at all.

I'm yet to venture into other 64-bit Pup breeds and am concerned that the structure of the working-well slacko-32-bit libraries pet/sfs is very different to the Tahr and Xenial versions in the pet/sfs I have. I may need to update these.

So portable-wine may still be a 'Plan B' to get 64-bit Pups set up the way I want in some 64-bit Pups.

David S.

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, David.

I look at it this way, mate; I know, for a fact, that by installing the 32-bit_compat_libs SFS package, followed by installing one of version2013's WINE packages, that it will work.....for me, at least.

So I stick with what works. I've never been that puritanical that I turn round and say that so-and-so must be done in a specific way. I don't care that it's not, strictly speaking, the 'correct' way to do things. From my reading on the subject, 'twould appear that WINE64 is not yet fully 'sorted'.....and is very much still a 'work in progress'.

No fault here accrues to version2013; his packages work flawlessly, as always. It's more than likely to do with the way the entire WINE infrastructure is implemented in the 64-bit Pups.....and for that, I place the blame squarely at MyCrudSoft's feet.....especially with that dozy 'SYSWOW64' stuff. Arrgh!

Cogito, ergo sum. If it works, I'll use it; I'm not proud!!


Mike.

[mikeslr]

Hi David,

Basically, I agree with Mike Walsh. And your idea of putting wine-portable on the back-burner is probably what I would do if I were in your shoes.

My main Puppy now is Xenialpup64 and before that it was Tahrpup64. You might guess from my screenshot I venture into Slackopup64s only occasionally. Slackware has the reputation of being more stable, conservative in its development, but with Ubuntu (and its spin-offs) being the most popular more applications are created with it (or its debian base) in mind. That may also apply to those working on updating Wine and whose work serves as a base for Version2013's wine pets.

I started using wine-portable before SaveFolders existed. I wanted to see if Dragon Naturally Speaking could be run under any Puppy. A version had been run under Ubuntu (Tahr?). Installation took about 10 Gbs. Kind of big for a SaveFile. Well, I could not get Dragon to run. But since I had wine-portable setup I decided to see what "installable" XP programs could run. At some point I measured the amount of programs installed into Wine-portable's false C:drive at 32 Gb. Also kind of a lot if I had been using a SaveFile.

Although there are some Windows programs I run because I can, there's only one I actually need. From time to time I consider just installing a wine-pet. Hence the other version of the InfoCentral Menu pet I mentioned.

But like 't'other Mike suggests, if it works for you, why do something else?

mikesLr

[Mike Walsh]

@ mikeslr:-

Mike, mate, I'm glad someone else agrees with me on this one. All my life, I've abided by two principles:-

1.) I always take the 'line of least resistance'. If there's a 'hard' way of doing summat, and an 'easy' way of attaining the same outcome, I will invariably take the latter course of action...

2.) At the same time, I've always believed that if something's worth doing, it's worth doing it to the very best of your ability. That way, if it's implemented as thoroughly and correctly as possible, there shouldn't be any need to have to go back and 'put things right'.

Which is why I always like to do my research first....and my approach to computing has been the same as that of any other endeavour to which I've embarked upon. Do it once.....and do it properly to start with!

(Well, whadd'ya know; I've hit the 4000 post mark. Yay!)


Mike.

[Mike Walsh]

Whoa, it's been a looong time time since I last visited this thread...

I'm re-visiting because I just want to mention a PortableApp that's fixed a very long-standing problem for me. And it shows, I feel, the difference in the way that support is proffered to both Windows and Linux.

I've ALWAYS had issues with recording audio on the big old Compaq tower, since switching to Puppy. I had no problems before that with Ubuntu, nor before that in XP. I've largely got around the problem (certainly for doing tutorials) by using a Logitech USB headset with its own built-in sound card. But for recording through the webcam, or recording from the system via 'dmix', it still comes out sounding all slow, and 'treacly'. It doesn't matter what I use; Audacity, mhWaveEdit, whatever.....through these two inputs, the result is always the same.

Which is why I was extremely pleased to find

Audacity 'portable'

Using this, I can just record whatever I want, whenever I want.....and it always comes out sounding perfect. (This is running under an external, sym-linked install of Wine 3.3; mikeslr's 'favourite', I believe, for just 'working'. It certainly does for me.)

Windoze stuff seems to always get the lion's share of the development pie. Linux, as the 'poor' relation, never gets much more than the 'crumbs' of an afterthought.....

Typical, ain't it?


Mike.

[davids45]

G'day,

Just a follow-up to my earlier posts in this thread - I have the Portable Wine 3.3 version from mikeslr running in recent 32-bit Pups and also with recent 64-bit Bionic ans ScPups.

The Portable Wine directory is in my data drive for the appropriate Pups and runs from a pinboard link in each Pup.

Still 'early days' for me with this, but I have used the setup.exe program to install the Windows program into the Portable Wine where needed then run from the drop-down list in the Portable Wine dialog box.

I will try pinboard links from the exe to the pinboard to run preferred Windows packages in a single click.

I'll try a few Portable Applications next although my main use is of 'commercial' Windows packages so doubt they'll appear in the Portable format.

Where I also have 'normal' Wine from version2013 via an sfs (4.0 linked to the data partition), both Wines seem so far to run without interference to the non-running other.

Thanks to both Mikes for this.

David S.

[davids45]

G'day,

I have a MultiPup USB with about half a dozen Pups (32-bit and 64-bit).

Running a Puppy or several from this USB, where should the WinePortable directory go?

I'd like to access the Portable Wine from each Pup on the CD.

I have a Portable Wine set up with installed Windows programs on my desktop's data partition. Can this directory be copied to somewhere on the USB to save me a little time?

First try copying this to the root directory of the USB; with a click, it opens but tells me there is no wine environment and to create one, the default location was (I think) inside the particular Pup not in the Portable Wine directory itself.

And if one of the MultiPups is installed to a hard-drive, what would be needed to add the Wine? Start afresh or a clever copy somewhere?

Or is a 'traditional' Wine sfs or pet the easier way?

Thanks for any help.

David S.

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, David.

Right. Now then.....

This thread was supposed to be about running Windows PortableApps under WINE. PortableWine is a somewhat different beast altogether, though I'll see if I can help, of course.

Mikeslr is actually our resident 'expert' on PortableWine, because he runs it all the time, from what I understand. The one thing I do know is this; even if you're sharing a single, PortableWine install between multiple Puppies, AFAIK you still need to right-click on PortableWine and 'register' it with each Puppy. This then adds all the relevant Menu entries, and makes it so that Puppy knows WINE is now 'installed'.....okay?

My personal 'workaround' for this, since I'm not very keen on the way PortableWine does things, was slightly different.

---------------------------------------

I took one of version2013's WINE .pets (3.3 v2_1, in my case), extracted it, and basically put the entire thing within its own, dedicated directory on an externally-mounted drive. I then built a .pet that sym-linked every single item into each Puppy at the points where Pup would expect to find them (takes a wee while to build, because there's a lot of items, y'know?) The beauty of this is that, once WINE has been set-up in one Puppy, it then just 'works' in every other Puppy that you use the 'sym-link' .pet to 'install' it to.....and it works really well, David.

The two directories that really need keeping outside of Puppy-space are the /usr/lib32 directory - this is where the 1000+ Windows .dlls live - and the /root/.wine directory itself, since this is where all the programs/apps live. When you're running a few of the text-to-speech apps, along with half-a-dozen or so of the freely-available AT&T 'NaturalVoices' (500MB+ each, natch), the /root/.wine directory can rapidly grow to several GB in size!

Following a request from Mikeslr, I had a go at putting together a script to 'externalize' the relevant, large parts of a WINE install; copying the directories in question, followed by deleting the originals, then sym-linking the copied items back to their original locations. Worked nicely, too. If you're interested in looking at it, I've attached it to the bottom of this post.

The other advantage of this is that if you have the room for whatever you have 'installed' with WINE, you can simply copy this directory across to your USB. You will, of course, need to re-build your sym-links .pet for the new locations.

I can't help wondering whether it might be possible to make use of the 'readlink' '$HERE' variable stuff that I use in the portable, Chromium-based browser builds I've done recently.....and modify the script accordingly? I 'borrowed' this from Fred's original portable 'take' on FF Quantum, and have used it in a lot of items since..... It ought to be feasible if you're keeping things self-contained on a single USB drive, I would imagine.

(One question; do you run all your USB Pups from sub-directories in a single main directory? If you do, that would make this a hell of a lot simpler; I ought to be able to modify the script so that you just copy both the 'external WINE' directory and the script itself, and just place them in the relevant locations. It's got to be worth a try, anyway.)

Let me know what ya think. We'll take it from there if you want to.....


Mike.