(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Posted: **Sun 19 Aug 2018, 14:45**

Installing Windows apps on Linux is about to get easier with Winepak

Jack Wallen discusses how the installation of Windows apps will soon no longer be a barrier to entry, thanks to Winepak.

By Jack Wallen | August 7, 2018

..to many users, Wine itself has been a bit of a hurdle, as it isn't always considered the most user-friendly tool. That is about to change.

How? Have you ever heard of Flatpak? If not, Flatpak provides a sandbox environment in which users can run applications in isolation from the rest of the system. These applications are containerized, so you don't have to worry about dependencies. You install the container and it runs. Simple as that.
Winepak makes it possible to create containerized Windows applications that are installable on Linux. Imagine, if you will, that you could install a Windows app on Linux with a single command. That's right. Say, for instance you wanted to install Notepad++. With Winepak installed, it would take little more than running the command sudo Flatpak install winepak org.notepad_plus_plus.Notepad-plus-plus.

Note that Puppy doesn't use sudo.

The installation will take some time, as it is has to download a fully containerized Wine application, but once it completes, Notepadd++ is ready to go. Of course, you have to first install Flatpak on your system, and then add the necessary repositories as well as install Winepak.

With that out of the way, you can install any Windows application found in the Winepak repository. Granted, there isn't much at the moment, but look for a lot of new applications to find their way onto the list soon. I'll also be creating a step-by-step how-to on getting Winepak up and running on Ubuntu, so look for it. Until then, get ready for Linux to become an even more viable solution for your desktop.

So this is like an application directory or a Rox app, with all the dependencies and no shared ones.

Posted: **Mon 20 Aug 2018, 10:33**

For apps that need dotNET I suspect the pack will probably be huge. For comparison, my wine folder (prefix) in which dotNET versions 2.0 through 4.6 are installed as updates, is about 1.5GB. But we'll see when multiple winepacks will start to be available.

Posted: **Mon 20 Aug 2018, 12:02**

Unless I do not understand.
Seems it is installing a type of Wine along with the Windows program.
You just get it all at one time.

With a normal install of Wine, you get all kinds of setting options and control of how Wine works.
This seems to be setup just for that specific program.

Posted: **Wed 22 Aug 2018, 10:20**

No, you understand it just fine, bigpup.

This is basically how TeamViewer used to work, until the current version 13. Up until version 12.0.85001, what Linux users got was the Windows version of TV, running under a self-contained install of WINE 1.6. I continued with cimarron's work, after he disappeared off the radar; the next few versions were a doddle to package.

TV13 now wants Qt5.....and there's a few system 'peculiarities' I just can't seem to satisfy. According to the terminal, it all starts fine, but the GUI point-blank refuses to show.....and the terminal is giving no clues. At all. But that's another story entirely.....

Mike.

Posted: **Wed 22 Aug 2018, 16:26**

I didn't know about Teamviewer, but that's also how they packaged the Linux version of Picasa: Wine + the Window's version. Bad ideas just don't see to die out.

mikesLr

Posted: **Fri 24 Aug 2018, 00:23**

Hi, Mike.

Mm. Picasa's a 'new' one to me. I see what ya mean about the Wine 'build' for running it, though.

I've just d/l'd Picasa 3.0-build_57.4402 for Linux, and converted it to an SFS. Quite a nifty app, I must admit.....but I wish I could figure out why it constantly & continuously scans for images, to the point where you end up with dozens of copies of literally everything..!!!

All the web entries for this question (and there are hundreds of 'em - seems everybody & his dog has 'problems' with this) point to the same thing; Tools->Options->FolderManager, and set everything to 'Scan Once'. But it then insists on re-scanning literally everything on all your connected drives every time you run it again.

Bizarre..... Ah, well; heigh-ho. That's 'Big Bruvver' for ya!

Mike.