by Mike Mansell

For about four months now, I have been using the Ubuntu Linux operating system full-time on both my desktop and notebook computer.  A few weeks into this experience, I wrote an article sharing some of my findings about the Windows to Linux migration process.  One of the main concepts that I addressed in this article was the concept of finding Linux based alternatives to ones current Windows software.  However, I also covered the fact that there are some software applications that simply do not have worthy alternatives, and for this reason suggested that Linux newcomers look into the WINE package to run Windows software on Linux.  However, there is no denying that WINE is at best a bit sketchy (as said by a commentator).

When I first started using Linux, I had heard about the CodeWeavers CrossOver software package that worked to run Windows applications in a Linux environment.  However, I could not justify purchasing it (retail pricing starting at $40) because in my eyes, it did not offer any value.  After all, it was based on the WINE project, and I saw it pointless to purchase something that was simply a re-branded version of something that was freely available.  More recently, though, a few people have been telling me about the wonders of CrossOver and how it was so much more than the branded WINE package that I thought it was.  For this reason, I decided to take the plunge and purchase CrossOver Linux Standard in order to run a few Windows applications in Linux.

Dan Kegel released winetricks 20100904 today.

lots of little fixes. New verbs comdlg32.ocx, vcrun2010, Winetrickstest really paid off this time... it caught three problems before release.

Changes:

Dan Kegel:

•  update shockwave sha1sum
•  stop using busted sourceforge mirror
•  revert change that broke dinput8 (unfixed issue 149)
•  use XDG_CACHE_HOME.  Fixes issue 124.
•  fix checksum on macosx (thanks to slevytam for logs)
•  add catchall dll-disabling verb, foo=disabled
•  remove fakeie6, it hasn't been needed for a long time.

What's new ?

Reader Gene told us that Kindle for PC is "more important than people realize." That's because the desktop app runs almost seamlessly in Linux with one WINE tweak, making Kindle a great little laptop or netbook reading option.

To install Kindle for PC on your Linux system, make sure you've got WINE installed. Most major distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE) offer WINE in one of their repositories, or have versions custom-made for them.

It is time for a new q4wine release tagged as version 0.114, this new release includes new Italian translation and translations updates for Spanish, Ukrainian and Portuguese (Brazil) locales.

I'd like to introduce at this time the new Wine Registry read\write engine, which allows reading existing Wine configuration keys during the Fake Drive update process. Also I added some more wine configuration options in the Fake Drive Wizard dialog.

General features are:

• Can export QT color theme into wine colors settings.
• Can easy work with different wine versions at same time;
• Easy creating, deleting and managing prefixes (WINEPREFIX);
• Easy controlling for wine process;
• Easy installer wizard for wine applications; (Not yet. Wait for v. 0.120)
• Autostart icons support;
• Easy cd-image use;
• You can extract icons from PE files (.exe .dll);
• Easy backup and restore for managed prefixes.
• Winetricks support.
• And more..