Creating a WINE PRefix .....

[FSandefur]

I'm starting off with an apology: It is possible this thread is entirely inappropriate, but frustration and desperation can make one do odd things...

and before anyone brings it up, if the people over in the windhq forums where willing to consider that not all of us are intimately familiar with the in workings of wine and/or hold a PhD in software engineering, I wouldn't be having this problem.

Before droning on with the details, is there anyone here able to help me do something that *should* be pretty simple with wine? Fair warning that I'll ask more than is probably necessary because I have this desire to understand what I'm doing, rather than just cut and paste command lines.

I guess I should at least tell you I'm running a 64-bit Kubuntu 16.04 installation, with the Plasma 5.65 backport and wine 1.9.13 dev branch installed and working. What I need is a workign 32-bit prefix for wine, and some understanding how to install an app to that prefix, without mucking up the existing stuff in the existing 64 bit prefix.

To reiterate...if asking this here is a problem, just tell me and this thread will go away.

Thanks


and by the way...if someone can help, please assume I am nearly an idiot, and include things like what directory I should be in when issuing commands......

[vinnywright]

what are you trying to install ,,,,,,it may help to know cause ,a lot of popular apps can be installed through "wine-tricks" and will install to thear own wine prefix.

but do also wait for someone that knows wine a bit more than me to chime in @hear

I do not really use wine ,,,,but have installed some stuff for others before just to test for them

VINNY

[FSandefur]

what are you trying to install ,,,,,,it may help to know cause ,a lot of popular apps can be installed through "wine-tricks" and will install to thear own wine prefix.

but do also wait for someone that knows wine a bit more than me to chime in @hear

I do not really use wine ,,,,but have installed some stuff for others before just to test for them

VINNY

I already have World of Tanks and World of Warships installed and running without issue. What I want to do is install Star Trek Online, which the best I can determine has a launcher that requires the presence of ie7 or better. The problem is, the ie7 or ie8 install (through winetricks) will only work in a 32-bit prefix. So my dilemma is, preserve the existing installations, and add a second 32 bit prefix, install ie7 or ie8 in it, and then install star trek online

[dequire]

You may not be familiar with Codeweaver's Crossover product. It's a paid product that uses Wine with the company's support and scripts to get a rather large database of Windows programs running. Think of it as a "pro" version of Wine. More about it here. Note that there is a free trial you can use in order to make sure your programs work. According to their forums, STO originally had a problem but has since been fixed. I have heard noting but good things about Crossover, so it might be worth considering.

[Rod J]

Hi FSandefur,

Have you heard of PlayOnLinux? It is a front-end for Wine and sets up all the Wine prefix complexities automatically for Windows games (also other Windows software too). Read more about PlayOnLinux here: https://www.playonlinux.com/en/. I think PlayOnLinux should be in the repository else you can download the latest deb from that site. I used it to install and play some old GOG Tomb Raider games I have which run perfectly. There is an install script for Star Trek Online as you can see in my screenshot below:

[Rod J]

Another approach might be to install Steam.

I have Steam installed here and it works wonderfully well. I bought Half Life 2 and Portal 1 recently quite cheaply and they play perfectly well. There is quite a bit of Star Trek Online titles available there too. http://store.steampowered.com/

[GreyGeek]

Hi FSandefur,

Both proffered solutions are excellent. WINE installations used to have serious problems, the biggest of which was that every time you got a Windows app running the next version upgrade would break your carefully worked out tweaks. Eventually the concept of "wine bottles" was introduced. Each app is installed in its own "bottles", in which the version of WINE, its architecture (32 or 64 bit), and the specific dll's are installed, along with user defined Configs and settings. Thus, if one bottle breaks the others are not effected. One can delete an app (bottle) without bothering the others. This allows you to "start over" with an app if you mess up an installation.

Since you have installed WINE allow me to suggest that you also install gufw and activate your firewall. Also turn off ping (IMCP).

[FSandefur]

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll be looking into each of them. I have to say it - as a group you have been more informative and of more real help than the WINE forums. Which is rather sad in a way.

In any case, I can see the logic in using a frontend like playonlinux or Codeweaver - I have to admit the 'open source' purist in me balks a little at Codeweaver, but I have heard they have an excellent product.

I eventually want to learn to do this sort of thing directly, but that can wait for another time.

I will have to play with steam some...I have the steam linux client, and it doesn't give me any options at all for Star Trek Online. Perhaps I need to install Steam's windows client under Wine to get that?

[MoonRise]

I can say that I started using PlayOnLinux and enjoy how easy it does make installing things and as mentioned, the prefix.

[GreyGeek]

...
I will have to play with steam some...I have the steam linux client, and it doesn't give me any options at all for Star Trek Online. Perhaps I need to install Steam's windows client under Wine to get that?

How well Steam's offerings work on Linux depends more on the game than on Steam. For example, I ran The CastleStory Beta, Portal and Portal 2, and some minor apps under 14.04 with no problems but my favorite Steam app, Universe Sandbox^2 was laggy until I suspended particle effects. Even then some of the simulations brought my machine to its knees. When I installed Steam under 16.04 I found that it was so fast that I could run all the simulations with full effects. Portal 2 ran well but CastleStory did not. Part of that is because on my box 16.04 runs about twice as fast as 14.04.

Another factor is your graphic chip. Mine is a mediocre Intel HD4000. If you have an NVidia chip with the proper driver you will get excellent performance.

I'm into simulations. I installed Orbit2010 and ran it,C which ran surprisingly well even though it was designed for Windows. Understand, though, that many Windows graphics simulations are designed to run under DX9, and they may or may not work using the dx9 drivers if your GPU driver isn't compatible.

[Rod J]

I will have to play with steam some...I have the steam linux client, and it doesn't give me any options at all for Star Trek Online. Perhaps I need to install Steam's windows client under Wine to get that?

I'm not sure what part of Steam you have installed but it should be the full graphical client like I have. In the screenshot below from the web page http://store.steampowered.com/ you can see I have searched for Star Trek Online and there is quite a few available (may not be all playable in Linux though). If you click on the button on the top of that page "Install Steam" it will install the Linux native Steam client (not running under Wine). I also got an identical result when I searched the Steam store within my graphical client too.


None of those games is are Linux native versions but Steam will let you know if the game will run OK on our platform. All the games I've installed in Steam are being played via Wine without problems. Steam just takes the guesswork and trial and error out of the process and you don't even know if the game is running natively or via Wine. I'm only a casual gamer so I'm not that knowledgeable about Steam but I'm very impressed with it so far. There was one game (can't remember the name of it just now) that the Steam client told me wasn't available on my platform (so I guess it knew it wouldn't run under Wine properly or that my hardware wasn't up to the task).