Wine-portable 7 using the Japanese Team’s Technique

[mikeslr]

The application discussed in this post, wine-portable-7.12_v3.1.tar.gz can be downloaded from here https://www.mediafire.com/folder/mso580 ... rtableWine

Limitations: Use in a 64-bit Puppy of this version is dependent of your system already using and configuring the 32-bit Compatibility SFS. These do not exist for VanillaDpup nor VanillaUpup. [QuickPup64 can use the 32bit Compatibility SFS available for Slacko64]. However, I expect that shortly Mike Walsh will publish a portable using a different technique –making use of an AppImage-- which I recommend for all 64-bit Puppys. It, however, can not be used with 32-bit Puppys Edit: [Written before 32-bit AppImages were discovered and MikeWalsh devised a way to portablize them]. This one can, at least those circa xenialpup32 or newer. Untested with older. For pre-xenialpup32 Puppys, the above link will also provide wine-portable-3.3_v2.1. The even older the wine-portable-2.16 can be found here. http://smokey01.com/ttuuxxx/Wine-Portable/.

You can skip down to Meat and Potatoes if you are only interested in how to put it to use.

Acknowledgement: Wine-portable-7.12_v3.1.tar.gz creates a portable using the technique, indeed the framework, published in 2014 by shinobar and the Japanese Team. https://oldforum.puppylinux.com/viewtop ... 97#p755297. Essentially it was build by substituting the wine 7.12_v3.1 pet published by version2013* after converting it into an SFS, for its predecessor SFS. Some of you may remember that I had difficulty ‘upgrading’ beyond wine version 3.3_v2.1. [IIRC, with the 4 series and beyond, wine now packaged some 32-bit libraries in the /usr/lib32 rather than the /usr/lib folder. But MikeWalsh overcame that difficulty and provided me with a wine-portable_v.5.11. I used that as the base for updating to v7.12.

[A post on this thread will provide the recipe for downgrading or upgrading should you find a need to do so].

The primary reason for publishing this version is to support the following post which will explain and provide the recipe for updating or down-dating wine-portables employing the Japanese Team’s system. The previous post on the ‘old-forum’ got truncated. I don’t think I’ll have a need for to update in the future. But your needs may be different than mine.

Why wine-portable? Because it is portable and the programs you install will also be. Add another Puppy, or replace your current Puppy, wine and the programs you’ve installed are 1-click away. Have another computer? The wine-portable-folder can be copied. Again, wine and the programs you installed then are 1-click away. And if you locate portable-windows programs within the wine-portable folder, copying the wine-portable-folder captures them as well for use on your other computer.

Why a version newer than wine-portable-3.3_v2.1? Newer versions of wine may support newer Windows programs, or even old Windows programs which previously couldn’t be run under Wine. I found one –and only one-- which now opens, but didn’t previously. Haven’t gone far enough to find out if it will fully function.

Why wine, at all? Today there are applications which run under Puppy Linux which are as good, perhaps better, than programs which run under Windows. I recommend that you become familiar with them. But there still are some, a few, Windows programs which run under Wine for which there are no Linux equivalents, for example Kindle. And you may have some ‘tried and true’ programs with which you are satisfied and don’t want to spend the time now to learn how to get the most of what Linux has to offer.

Meat and Potatoes:

On a 64-bit Puppy, start here:

1. Download and SFS-Load the applicable 32bit Compatibility SFS for your 64-bit Puppy.
2. Open a terminal and type “ldconfig”. That command starts with a ‘small’ l, (phonetic 'el') not the number 1, nor a capital I (pronounced like the word ‘eye’). Depending on which version of Puppy & 32bit compatibility SFS you are using, this step may be unnecessary and may display an error. If so, ignore it and go to step 3.
3. Test that the 32-bit libraries are now linked to your 64-bit system by starting a 32-bit application less demanding than wine. Recommended for this purpose are either palemoon or firefox portables. If they open, you’re good to go. If you have no need for it and you can delete the portable's folder. Deletion will leave no trace as these portables are ‘self-contained’.

On a 32-bit Puppy, start here:

4. Download the wine-portable-7.12_v3.1.tar.gz from here https://www.mediafire.com/folder/mso580 ... rtableWine
5. UExtract it: Right-Click>UExtract.
6. In the extracted folder, wine-portable-7.12_v3.1.tar.gz.extracted, you’ll find a folder just named “wine-portable”. Move it to wherever you intend to keep it.

It is not designed to run from anywhere within your SaveFile. So don’t put it in /opt. Either /mnt/home or /mnt/YOUR-PUPPY’S-OWN-FOLDER are good locations as they will always be available when you boot up. Don’t proceed to Step 7 before finalizing its location. Registering wine-portable creates links. If you move it later you’ll have to Menu>Setup>Puppy Package Manager>Uninstall; then re-register.

7. Right-Click the wine-portable folder and select ‘Register Wine on Puppy menu’. If that option doesn’t appear, Right-Click the wine-portable folder and select ‘Look Inside’. Inside you’ll see a script named Register. Left-Click it.

8. Make certain you have an internet connection. The next Step will offer to download files.

9. Click Menu>Utility>Wine Config. During configuration you’ll be asked if you want to install Wine Mono and (perhaps) gecko. If selected, these will be downloaded.

[The installation of Wine Mono uses about 500 Mbs of Storage. You probably don’t need Wine Mono. It’s Wine’s implementation of the .NET Framework. I don’t have any programs which require .NET Framework. But, if you do, Wine can use a Windows build of Mono. WineHq now recommends that. Check WineHq for the lastes information.
This version of Wine did not offer to install gecko. It is also a program you probably would not need. AFAIK, all it did was enable you to open html files in Wine. In its absence, your default html viewer will open them. Edit: see the footnote here, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 210#p87210].

10. The wine-config GUI will enable you to choose which version of Windows it should run as. Select one, click Apply, then click OK. You can always open Wine Config again to change your selection.

You’re good to go. Notice that another listing has been added to your Start Menu. System>Wine Window program loader will open a GUI. Its scroll button will offer to start any of Wine’s built in programs and any program you later install. Install is the operative word. It will not know anything about portable Windows programs you just download and run without installation. Among the programs available via Wine Window program loader are notepad, wordpad, explorer, taskmgr, and winefile.

After you restart-X, AKA Graphical Server, winetricks will be available. To use it, open a terminal and type

“wine.sh winetricks”, without the quotes.

A Window programs can be opened by Left-Clicking binaries ending with 'exe'. If you desire to create a direct menu entry to any wine.sh is the command to open any portable windows program, and the builtin wine programs you’ll find in either /wine-portable/wine-data/drive_c/Program Files or windows. To file-browse into the wine-portable folder Right-Click it and select 'Look Inside'.

See the links from this post, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 695#p64695 about how to create menu listings for window portable programs. The next post also discusses that.

==-=--=-=-=----
* available from here, https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 776#p63776

[mikeslr]

If after extracting the wine-portable folder from its tar.gz package you examine its contents [Right-Click>Look Inside] you’ll see this:

There’s a folder named CryptEdit, and another named LOTUS-organizer. If you decide you don’t want either or both you can simply Right-Click the folder(s) and select Delete. Both are small window-portables. This implementation of Wine does not depend on either.

If you run Windows you will devote a substantial part of your computer’s resources running programs to avoid malware. Wine does not provide any. It expects your operating system to. Puppy has its firewall, your router’s firewall and such builtin protection provided by your Web-browser and the add-ons you install into it. Programs run under Wine, however, are very intrusive. Unless you run Wine in a Chroot, the programs you run under it, at least in theory, can access any file on your system. I don’t recommend running programs under wine while you are online.

CryptEdit is a WordProcessor very much like WordPad. Except that in addition to saving the documents you create/edit using it in HTML, DOC, RTF, ASCII, WRI, and UNICODE, you can also save them as PRT (Protected Text Format with 3 security levels); and do so without having to access any other application or anything else on your computer.

Lotus-organizer is a personal information manager. You can see from this screenshot that it provides a comprehensive array of tools for managing your information. Highly recommended by amethyst (whose version I flinched and dismembered), with Osmo no longer being fully functional under some Puppys, I thought it could be an invaluable addition to your tool-kit.

Lotus.png (72.06 KiB) Viewed 1815 times

The attached pet will create menu entries to both programs. But they won’t work without a little manual intervention. They were created while I was using a Puppy from a folder named ‘PUP’ with the wine-portable located within the PUP folder [basically so as to not interfere with my other Puppys or the other explorations into Wine I was conduction].

CryptEdit&Lotus-menus.pet

(84.96 KiB) Downloaded 61 times

After installing the pet you will find that the /usr/share/applications/CryptEdit.desktop has a Exec argument which reads

Exec=wine.sh /mnt/home/Pup/wine-portable/CryptEdit/CryptEdit.exe
[Colored blue above for emphasis only]

You have to spell out accurately the full path to the location of the executable; in this case CryptEdit.exe. If you were to move the entire wine-portable folder to a top level on /mnt/home you would have to edit the above line to read

Exec=wine.sh /mnt/home/wine-portable/CryptEdit/CryptEdit.exe

A similar change would have to be made to the Exec line in LotusOrganizer’s desktop. It currently reads:

Exec=wine.sh /mnt/home/Pup/wine-portable/LOTUS-Organizer/ORG2/ORGANIZE.EXE

Note that both Exec arguments begin with the command wine.sh. As previously mentioned that is the necessary command to open any program under this version of wine-portable.

Once you’ve made the necessary edit to Lotus Organizer’s desktop file, you can add it to Autostart so that each time you boot into or restart your puppy it will display on your desktop. Just drag & drop that desktop file into /root/.config/autostart. Note the ‘.’/dot preceding config. It’s a hidden file, displayed when you Left-Click rox’s ‘Eye’. Alternatively, you can first drop LotusOrganizer.desktop into /root/Startup; then drag it onto the shortcut in that folder named autostart.

[mikeslr]

Warning: Each version of wine has binaries and libraries unique to it. Each creates one or more prefixes into which programs are installed. AFAIK, these can not be used in a different implementation of Wine. Programs installed into one implementation will have to be re-installed in another.

So why change? First, see the OP about running Wine, at all. Wine continues to improve. Future versions may enable you to run programs which previously could not be. But there is also a possibility that some essential-to-you program runs best under an older version of Wine. The most reliable way to find out what programs run under various versions of Wine, and limitations in doing so, is to conduct a search using https://appdb.winehq.org/; then read the posts. [Does not apply to portable Windows programs which WineHq doesn't review, but which sometimes work when its installible version doesn't].

Caution: With the publication of Wine version 4 the location of libraries changed. If you want version 3 or earlier, start by using as either wine-portable-3.3_v2.1. or wine-portable-2.16. Both are linked from the OP of this thread. Use the following only as a guide. It uses wine-portable-7.12_v3.1 and assumes that the Wine-portable you want is version 4 or newer.

For the purpose of this explanation, let’s assume that your ‘must have’ program is Amazon Kindle. [AFAIK, it runs fine under wine-portable-7.12_v3.1]. In WineHq’s database Amazon Kindle version 1.31x is given a platinum rating under wine version 6.11. https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager. ... &iId=10597. To build a Wine-portable-6.11, we’ll use wine-portable-7.12_v3.1 as one source, and versions2013’s wine-6.11_v3.1.pet as the other. See the post here regarding downloading version2013’s pets: https://www.forum.puppylinux.com/viewto ... 776#p63776. It also explains the versioning system, i.e. v1 thru v4 and points “.1” or “.2”.

Overview:
If you look at the contents of wine-portable-7.12_v3.1,
--Right Click wine-portable, select "Look Inside" from the pop-up menu--
you’ll see a file named wine-7.12_v3.1_8.0.sfs. This is the only file we will be changing: primarily replacing some of its files with those from the wine-pet you downloaded. [FYI, the designation “_8.0” tells you that I created the sfs using a Series 8 Puppy. It tells me that I forgot to rename the SFS by removing that designation before uploading the tar.gz. ]

Extracting, Mounting and keeping track of what you’re doing.

To obtain access to the files contained in the wine-pet, you extract it. For example, Right-Click the pet and from the popup menu select UExtract. An Extracted folder will be created, and burrowing into it you’ll find a folder named etc and another named usr. For ease in following this guide you may want to copy those folders into a folder named Top-pet: Right-Click an Empty Space and from the pop-up menu select New>Directory. Give it the name Top-pet.

For ease of following this guide create a 2nd folder named Bottom-sfs. To obtain access to the files in wine-7.12_v3.1_8.0.sfs you have to mount it: Left-Click it and select “View Contents”. Copy the contents (folders also named etc and usr) into the Bottom-sfs folder.

You’ll have to have windows to both folders open. If you place Top-pet folder above the Bottom-sfs folder you’re less likely to get lost, especially if you have to take a break.

Both have /etc folders which have only one file. Both are identical. They relate to establishing the exe as a mine-type to be opened by Wine. [IIRC, thru version 3 this file appeared somewhere in /root; perhaps under /.config/rox.sourcceforge.net.]

I don’t know of any reason not to just substitute the one from your source pet to your build of the new SFS; or not change the latter. But I deleted the folder from Bottom-sfs and copied that from Top-pet into it.

Examining /usr/bin you;ll find that the pet has 25 files while the SFS has 26. The additional file is the essential wine.sh script. All other files are binaries, scripts or symbolic links. As the binaries and scripts between the two versions may be different, and the symbolic links nay be to different files, I replace those in the Bottom-sfs with those from the Top-pet. MAKE SURE THAT THE wine.sh script remains.

Tip>Replacing most files in a folder: Put your mouse-cursor inside a folder. Press Ctrl-a. This will select/highlight All files. Ctrl-Left-click any to Unselect it. Right-Click any selected file. Selecting delete from the pop-up menu will delete all selected. Place your mouse-cursor on any file selected and you can drag it and all files selected into the other window. From the pop-up menu select copy.

/usr/lib32: Inside both you’ll see a folder named wine. In Bottom-SFS you’ll see a file named libwine.so.1 and two symlinks to it. Replace the entire wine folder. Make sure to retain the libwine.so.1 and the two symliinks to it.

/usr/local: The only files in this folder relates to wine’s color setter. They are likely identical. But I replace the entire folder in Bottom-sfs with that from the Top-pet. Delete /usr/local from Bottom-sfs, drag-drop-copy the /usr/local folder from Top-pet into Bottom-sfs/usr.

/usr/sbin: Both had 45 files. With the exception of the winetricks and winewrapper scripts all files were symlinks. I replaced by the entire /usr/sbin folder.

/usr/share in Bottom-sfs has an applications folder I left alone. It is used in the creation of menu entries. Both have a pixmaps folder in which what appeared to be identical winecfg.png are located. I also left this folder alone. For reasons beyond me, the pixmap wasn’t used. So on a rebuild, I replaced it with the one from Top-pet. [Note, this may suggest a good reason to replace what appears to be identical files].

Which brings us to the /usr/share/wine folder and its contents.

fonts: Top-pet has only 56 fonts while Bottom-sfs has 64. This is because I added some commonly used fonts to the 7.12_v3.1 build. If there are any fonts you want to always have available under Wine, you can copy them into this folder. [Alternatively, after a wine-prefix has been created, you can copy them into wine-portable/wine-data/drive_c/windows/Fonts.]

nls. Top-pet has 75 while Bottom-sfs has 76. These appear to be binary files. Rather than guess I Ctr-a/selected all the files in the Top-pet...nls folder, dragged them into the Bottom-sfs… nls folder and selected copy; OK’ing the overwrites. This revealed that only a file named locale.nls had not been replaced. While it may not be of any use to the new version of Wine, it might be. And if the new version of Wine may not call it, I don’t think its presence can do any harm. I left it alone.

wine.inf: this is a text file specifying the wine version and providing information about it. I replaced the version in Bottom-sfs with that from Top-pet.

That’s it. Now its time to create an SFS from your Bottom-sfs folder. But first change the name of that folder: Right-Click>rename. I gave it the name wine-6.11_v3.1. Right-Click the now named wine-6.11_v3.1 folder and select dir2sfs from the pop-up menu. wine-6.11_v3.1.sfs will be created.

Place the wine-6.11_v3.1.sfs in the Wine-portable folder, replacing its predecessor. You’re good to go. Of course, if you were previously using wine-portable you’ll have to Menu>Setup>Puppy Package Manager> uninstall the file named wine-portable-.1 before you can register the new version.

Kindle-wine-6.11.png (20.34 KiB) Viewed 1759 times

Kindle running under Wine-portable 6.11_v3.1. Not tested. This exercise was undertaken as a ‘Proof of Concept’.

If you intend to archive you new wine-portable folder, you may want to give the archive the name wine-portable-6.11_v.3.1 to distinguish it from similar archives.

[mouldy]

Kindle running under Wine-portable 6.11_v3.1. Not tested. This exercise was undertaken as a ‘Proof of Concept’

The biggest weakness of newer versions of Kindle4PC in WINE is registering the account with Amazon. Just getting Kindle to run initially is only half the battle. The registration process tends to be "twitchy" and "crashy". Luckily you only have to do this once. I found having WINE run Kindle as win7 is most stable. Set this for Kindle in winecfg. You can specify which version windows for each app in WINE. The default "global" is probably the most problematic. You will get the win7 not supported error in Kindle, but it works. You can change it to win10 after registering and the warning will go away, though I dont think its worth bother and with it identified as win7 they dont try to auto update it since they dont support win7.... LOL. I am sure you probably cant buy books through the Kindle4PC app like that but buying books is not the problem, you can use your browser for that. Not sure why anybody would buy books through the app. Sort of a nothing-burger. Just important that the app can download the books and make them readable.

Oh also mention that for long time Kindle4PC 1.17 was newest you could run in WINE. And lot people use it in windows and linux cause the format of books sent to it can be de-DRM'd with unofficial Apprentice Alf plugin in Calibre. Some running it in windows for this purpose have come up with all sorts of scripts and such to keep Amazon from forcibly updating it. Newer versions Kindle4PC download books in a format A.A. plugin cant handle. Far as I can figure none of these scripts apply to running it in WINE. Version 1.17 in WINE just wont register with Amazon account anymore. I mostly read throwaway fiction so not much interested in de-DRMing it or saving it for posterity, but I did give analog way to do this with windows free program called automatic screenshotter which runs fine in WINE by the way. The file you end up with is much larger than typical epub but its very readable. So if you arent too worried about storage space, its an alternative to A.A. vs Amazon wars.

Oh and on the 32bit compatibility thing. When I wanted WINE in EasyOS while back before the 32bit version and with no SFS for it, I just copied the 32bit libraries from MX-19 and after couple sim links WINE pet had no problem with it. Its no great mystery, it just wants the 32bit libraries in a place it expects to find them. Just saying if your Puppy or Dog or Easy or most likely any linux doesnt have 32bit/compatibility, its not the end of the world. Some things seem lot more complicated/mysterious, than they actually are. More the time necessary to figure them out.