My most used Wine program

[vtpup]

I have Wine installed for a few Win programs I can't do without (the old free Google SketchUp 7 and 8 for example, not Trimble's later versions). BUT... I also have one program I could probably do without via Linux apps, except that it just does what it does better than any other I have tried. It is without doubt the most used Wine program I have. That program is Josh Madison's units conversion program, Convert.exe. Would I install Wine just for this program? Nope. But if Wine is there already for other purposes, this one is my absolute favorite units converter -- I use it daily, and it is definitely my most used Wine program. Shortcut icons for Convert and Galculator sit side by side on my desktop. Free, as in beer, 153 kb small, and available here: https://joshmadison.com/convert-for-windows/

What's your favorite Wine guilty pleasure?

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[amethyst]

I have about 20 Windows Programs I use with Wine. Most used is my Audiobook-Creator which uses a few Windows applications as part of the operation. I've named a few 32-bit Windows programs I use here: viewforum.php?f=163

[williwaw]

Would I install Wine just for this program? Nope.

for those cases you might like
https://www.1728.org/indexcon.htm

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

For me, there's no contest. The one Windows app I cannot do without - I got so handy with it under Windows XP! - has GOT to be MooiTech's PhotoScape. I've yet to find another photo-editing/graphics app that will perform the combination of incredibly useful functions that this does.....all in the same app. I can achieve the same functionality under Linux, I think.....but ONLY by using some 4 or 5 different apps to do so.

I use this for all my desktops, which I design from scratch. Nothing else can touch it.....not even the GIMP.

I usually have WINE installed for several utilities & other graphics apps anyway, so it's always there. Would I install WINE just for this one app? Er.....confession time! Using one of the WINE AppImages @trister found for us on Github a couple of years back, I've built a self-contained, fully-portable version of PhotoScape.....with prefix set-up and using the 'portable' build of PhotoScape from PortableApps.com...!

The things I get up to, huh?

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it a lot more over time......with this HP desktop, I have SO much RAM, and SO much storage - along with a far more powerful CPU than I've ever had before - that in some ways, I've long since left the traditional Puppy user paradigm behind. I could run literally anything I wanted to on here.....but I stick with our Pup 'cos I know just what I'm doing with it, and I thoroughly enjoy using her.

I'm sentimental like that!

Mike.

[vtpup]

MIke, I'll have to try that one.

Which HP laptop do you have now? I just got my first of that brand, and like you, it's a giant step up, though I, like you, also always intended it to be a Puppy machine, with a few exceptions for special programs. I see nothing wrong with a portable including wine for a certain function that is too good to ignore!

I even just installed a qemu Win7 instance for a few weird CNC/CAM specialty apps I occasionally need.

I'm amazed how fast Win7 runs as a virtual machine in Fossapup 64-CE on this new machine. Faster than it ran on my 12 year old Acer when both were brand new! The nvme drive is probably as responsible as the processor for that, I'm guessing. I did try the whole shebang on thumbdrive earlier and the VM was slow as molasses in January. But now installed on the laptop the thing flies!

[vtpup]

Playing around with Photoscape a little, Mike. I like what I see so far. My go-to photo editor is plain MTPaint for basic resizing photos, filetype change, cropping, adjusting brightness or contrast, or adding lines or text. That represents about 90% of my everyday photo-editor usage. It's fast and simple and is my default basic photo editor.

If I have to do anything special (sophisticated color correction, perspective correction, photo overlaying, airbrush, etc) I use Gimp. But I find Gimp tedious and non-intuitive to use. I've never liked it. So if Photoscape does these things more simply and easily I might use it.

Right now on this new machine it opens in a smallish screen and the icons and letters are too small for comfort on this laptop's screen, one of the drawbacks of increased resolution. It's a big screen (17.3") but still, 1920 x 1080 makes for small type and icons. I'll have to figure out how to make Photoscape bigger in Wine.....

Oh, yeah I remember now.... wineconfig, resolution. Checking with a ruler and 1920 dots across I get 128 DPI. Set that in Wine and it looks much better.

[rockedge]

I have been using a version of Photofiltre since 2006. Excellent for image and photo editing and creation. Easy to use and full featured and runs well with WINE.

PhotoFiltre 7 is a complete image retouching program. It allows you to do simple or advanced
adjustments to an image and apply a vast range of filters on it. It is simple and intuitive to use, and
has an easy learning curve. The toolbar, giving you access to the standard filters with just a few
clicks, gives PhotoFiltre 7 a robust look. PhotoFiltre 7 also has layer manager (with Alpha
channel), advanced brushes, batch module and lot of other powerful tools.

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PhotoFiltre 7

Screenshot(31).jpg (24.78 KiB) Viewed 807 times

[mikewalsh]

@rockedge :-

Yup; Photofiltre's a good 'un. I've used it on & off for years. It's pretty useful...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@vtpup :-

This is an HP Pavilion mid-tower desktop rig; one of these:-

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c06360432

(That 4 GB RAM became 32 GB during the first year of the pandemic. The 1 TB HDD - a Toshie - became a 1 TB Crucial MX-500 SSD a year later, and these two, together with the Intel Pentium G5400T - dual-core but with H/T, so effectively a quad-core - have transformed the way I use my Pups.

I've always preferred desktops, TBH. Far easier to work on; upgrading is usually a lot easier, ditto maintenance - way more space!)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yeah, I liked PhotoScape right from its early versions in late 2008 / early 2009. It was always very simple, intuitive & easy-to-use; later builds added no end of useful features which initially I never thought I'd ever need.....yet I now use many of them regularly without even thinking about it. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but it's an intuitve photo-editing/image creation app that even raw noobs will very soon feel comfortable with.

BTW, I've seen you mention Sketchup on several occasions, so I tracked down a 7-series build from OldVersions.com - this is 7.0.10247 - and have taken a quick look at it. Looks interesting!

I'll investigate further during the coming weeks, as & when I get a bit more free time...

Mike.

[vtpup]

BTW, I've seen you mention Sketchup on several occasions, so I tracked down a 7-series build from OldVersions.com - this is 7.0.10247 - and have taken a quick look at it. Looks interesting!

I'll investigate further during the coming weeks, as & when I get a bit more free time...

Mike.

Mike Google (before Trimble) Sketchup 7 is a good one. Best started out with if you find OLD youTube instructional videos like this one:

often done by kids.

Here's more advanced instructional for designing a model plane https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthr ... l-examples . There's also an interesting website with tons of info for designing airplane models and creating cnc cutting scripts using Sketchup at the Phlatboyz site: https://phlatforum.com/xenforo/

Their Sketch-U-Cam tool plugin actually work quite well for doing other kinds of things like CNC milling. With it I've even done design work in SketchUp for plugging into Cura slicer for doing 3D printing.

Also if you get into using SketchUp, there are a number of older plugins and tools I have which really expand its capabilities. One such is allowing additional CAD output formats:

https://www.guitar-list.com/download-so ... dxf-or-stl .

Let me know if you really start using it and I'll send you some more plugins/tools.

BTW to get sketchup started running in wine you do have to make one registry change. Install Sketchup and try to run it. It will crash on first startup, that's normal for wine, but then just make this change and all will be well:

Wine Regedit (in terminal)

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Sketchup7\Display\GLConfig\HW_OK   (change that from 0 to a 1)

Close and start SketchUp again and it should start normally after.

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

I'm guessing the WINE AppImages I use must be set-up somewhat differently to yours. What are you using.....version2013's builds?

No registry hacks needed here. I just clicked on the .exe file and she fired-up straight away.....and no crashes either!

I've no idea what I might use Sketchup for yet. Still, thanks for the link to the YT video for series-7. I'll take a gander at it as soon as I get a chance...

(Let me know how you get on with PhotoScape....OK?)

Mike.

[vtpup]

Well it'll start up into the initial welcome and then you go to the theme selection screens, but once you've selected a theme, and then gone on to open the main program, that's when the crash happens (I mean if it does). But maybe you're right and your version of Wine has that worked out. If so, nice!

[vtpup]

I have been using a version of Photofiltre since 2006. Excellent for image and photo editing and creation. Easy to use and full featured and runs well with WINE.

I remember PhotoFiltre! I liked it. So I just found an old version (7 from 2016, I believe) online and have installed that. I really like the layout so much better than Gimp, with all it's floating tool windows and the strange way brushes work. I still have trouble doing simple things sometimes in Gimp. Looks like the older version of PhotoFiltre does have perspective correction tools (called "Deform"), which is one of my main needs for Gimp. Gimp's is a little more sophisticated with a warped grid, but I think I can use PhotoFiltre's simple sliders for left, right, top and bottom, and get a similar result. I'll try it!

I did hit one snag when closing an image inside PhotoFiltre. It threw a never ending series of error messages, and I had to kill the program. But I can probably avoid that feature. Generally I close a program, rather than an image.

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

<snip>...I really like the layout so much better than Gimp, with all it's floating tool windows...</snip>

Steve, were you aware that you can change GIMP from individual floating windows to a single, combined all-in-one window? It's a lot easier to use this way, although it's only been an option since G.I.M.P 2.8 onwards. 2.6 & earlier didn't have this...

Menu -> Windows -> Single-window mode

As easy as that!

Mike.

[vtpup]

Mike I did know that, I guess I just don't click mentally with how everything is located into these chunks, even if stabilized! I do like PhotoFiltre's unitary structure. It's old fashioned Win 98 program style, and that seems to fit the way my mind works. Also I guess why I like Puppy/Jwm etc.

New problem arose today and I'm in Wine hell right now trying out different versions in totally disorganized fashion. I've got to straighten out mentally and installation wise and do a fresh OS install to test things on, carefully and in order.

Problem arose thus: I was happily SketchUp-ing away designing something, when a couple anomalies popped up. The first was when I tried to draw a select box around something to move it. That's a left button press, and then drag the box around whatever you want to select. However when I did the press and drag, the screen went black except for the box being drawn. As soon as I let up on the button, everything reappeared, and the box was there, too. Which was sorta okay, but it shouldn't go black while dragging, because you can't see what you're selecting exactly.

So that was an irritation. Next problem was when I saved (which I do periodically while working on something important) it would do the save, but then I couldn't move the cursor with the mouse in the SketchUp window) I had to kill SketchUP from outside the window. My work was indeed saved, so again, no great loss, but this also is not really acceptable .

So then I thought maybe this 5.11 appimage portable wine version is maybe too high? So I've been going nutz trying to find an earlier version of wine that works on this setup -- which is complicated by the 64bit/32 bit wine craziness and all kinds of old procedures and old forum advice like, is the 32 bit compatibility sfs required? Is one available for or needed for F96-CE?, etc.

Time to simplify the variables and set up a new test install with clean Pup everything.....

I'm feeling the need to start over with a new separate OS install......

[vtpup]

Sorry Mike you asked if I'd used Version2013's wine. No I was using the appimage framework and the Wine 5.11 appimage.

I have just now created a brand new savefile, clean, and tried several versions of appimages with the appimage framework, from 5.11 down to version 3.0. Then loaded fresh copies of SketchUp into them. ALL of them do the same black screen issue when click-dragging to select an object, and all of them have the same issue of freezing cursor after a save of the current drawing. Therefore it seems to be something more organic and probably not related to wine specifically.

My options seem to be possibly finding another distro than F-96 CE that acts differently re graphics rendering, and will run on this laptop, or running Sketchup in F96-CE in a qemu instance of Windows 7 (which I've already made) and seeing if the behavior there is different.

Real disappointed tonight....

[Geek3579]

I have had troubles with some GUIs under wine, and found that running the program in a virtual desktop helped. Its one of the options in wine config, under graphics, I think You can set to size of the desktop to suit, too.

[vtpup]

Thanks Geek3579 I had tried that and also some of the other graphics settings in wine config. I've since tried alternate graphics settings in SketchUp itself. No change.

To try a different distro, I have just created a fossapup 9.5 installation (with the added 6.18 huge kernel I used in F96-CE) Same behavior. This behavior may be related to the kernel version, since that did not change.

I'm presently trying Bookworm dpup, which runs on this laptop without changing from its stock kernel (6.1.67). I do seem to need a 6.x kernel on this new laptop -- mainly for the touchpad driver. I'm having a little trouble at the moment getting a portable wine to run in Bookworm, using the same appimage framework I was using in F96-CE. Working on that at the moment.....

[mikewalsh]

@vtpup :-

I don't quite know how to put this, Steve. You are going to HATE me....

Just literally this last half-hour or so, I've set-up a brand-new install of radky's Bookwormpup64. I thought it was perhaps time I had a look, and discovered for myself what all the fuss was about!

I must say, Roger's done his usual lovely job with this Puppy. It's a piece of cake setting it up, too; this is where all the hard work of the past few years is paying off now, 'cos I'm in the middle of linking-in all my externally-mounted 'portables'.......and it's going swimmingly.

This includes WINE. Given that I now have 3 AppImage-based WINE-portable builds set-up and operational ATM - 4.21, 5.11 and the current 9.3.0 - I put my thinking cap on, did a wee bit of head-scratching, and cobbled together a wee GUI utility for swapping back & forth between them. When the GUI is launched, it tells me which version is currently 'linked-in', so I know what's going on. It all works rather nicely.

There IS a bit of manual setting-up involved, 'cos there's a few custom scripts in the mix, tailored for my particular set-up.....so it's not quite as straight-forward as simply building & publishing a .pet package. The user will, at some point, have to enter in their own specific $PATH to where they keep their portable WINE. I'll have a think about this; I can probably use/modify a script I used in my MultiCam utility, year before last, so as to "automate" things a bit further.

Or have I got the wrong Puppy here? Is it one of dimkr's VanillaDPup builds you're using?

The other possible "fly in the ointment" is that I've never actually investigated quite how Mikeslr put the "Framework" together, so..... What problems are you encountering here?

Mike.

[vtpup]

Mike I'll never hate you for anything!

I did post just now for this specific issue here:

viewtopic.php?p=115180#p115180

[version2013]

Wine Regedit (in terminal)

Code: Select all

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Sketchup7\Display\GLConfig\HW_OK   (change that from 0 to a 1)

Close and start SketchUp again and it should start normally after.

I did a quick install to test.
In my regedit, it goes "\GLConfig\Display\HW_OK".

Still, the application runs a bit slow on my older laptop.

[vtpup]

Thanks version2013, and thanks for all your wine compilations over the years! I've used them forever. Except just now where I was using appimages. But I would like to try one of your .pets to see if my problems can be solved on this new computer. What version wine and SketchUP were you using, and did you find that click dragging to select an object caused the screen to go blank momentarily? Thanks!

[version2013]

Thanks version2013, and thanks for all your wine compilations over the years! I've used them forever. Except just now where I was using appimages. But I would like to try one of your .pets to see if my problems can be solved on this new computer. What version wine and SketchUP were you using, and did you find that click dragging to select an object caused the screen to go blank momentarily? Thanks!

It was only a brief test, as I am unfamiliar with Sketchup. During the brief test, the screen did not go blank.
Unsure what a longer test would uncover.

wine 9.3
sketchup 7 - from:https://designerhacks.com/skp-download-all/

Puppy: S15Pup64
AMD laptop, so Mesa graphics that this distro provides.

[vtpup]

I'm beginning to suspect the version of Mesa graphics is the problem for this laptop. It is llvmpipe (LLVM 12.0.0 256 bits) Version 3.1 Mesa 21.2.6 .

I suspect this because I've tried a number of puppies now and Bookworm, with a couple of kernels in the 6.0.x to 6.1.x range, and several wine versions from 3.0 to 6.x with no change. Exactly the same symptoms.

On my older laptop (in sig) using the same puppies and bookworm, using Wine versions in the same range, I do not have that issue. The difference is in the age of the Intel integrated graphics, AND the Mesa OpenGL drivers.

Both computers have Intel integrated graphics, but the newer one has recent Iris Xe version.

I do not know what llvmpipe is, but all of my earlier computers report an Intel version of mesa, not llvmpipe, whatever that is. VM sounds like virtual machine, and pipe implies some kind of connection. I'm guessing this is some kind of interim workaround graphics driver.

I have just found this, which I find hard to understand (written by AI?) which seems to promise some kind of full Intel integration. When or how, I don't understand, or how I can get it on my system. Perhaps someone here can interpret the jargon...?

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Intel-Xe- ... .1-Default

[vtpup]

I was able to get a copy of SketchUp into my Qemu Windows 7 virtual machine, install it and run it. It DOES NOT have the problems that the Puppy/Wine setups do.

I still don't think it's the OS, or wine issue however. I think it's an OpenGL/Mesa version problem.