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The Wine “not-emulator” allows you to run Windows software under Linux, but the version in the Debian testing repos (themselves cutting edge) is pretty old, at time of writing it’s a 1.3.6 variant, while Wine 1.5.0+ is now available. Unfortunately, upgrading can be a bit of a pig if you want to build Wine yourself, so a far better solution is to find some Debian binaries and install them. So let’s do that…

Getting the Debian binaries

Wine binaries are available for a whole heap of different platforms, distros and architectures from http://www.winehq.org/download/, but in this case I’m installing on Debian, so if you are too, head on over to http://dev.carbon-project.org/debian/wine-unstable/ and grab the following packages (either 32 or 64 bit, depending on your architecture – I’m using 64-bit LMDE so I’ll use the 64-bit package names for this quick guide):

• libwine-alsa-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-bin-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-capi-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-cms-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-dbg-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-dev-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-gl-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-gphoto2-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-ldap-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-openal-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-oss-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-print-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-sane-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• libwine-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• wine-bin-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb
• wine-unstable_1.5.0-0.2_amd64.deb

Replacing Wine

Before you can install any new Wine stuff, you’ll first have to uninstall the wine package. Do that through whatever means you feel most comfortable with, ya know, synaptic, apt, dpkg etc.

Once that’s done, you’ll want to install all the libwine packages through dpkg (to be honest, you might not need them all – but it doesn’t hurt, and you’ll certainly need most of them).

To install all the libs, open up the location you saved all the .deb files to in the console, and run:

sudo dpkg -i libwine*

Once that’s completed successfully, in the same location run:

sudo dpkg -i wine-bin*

And finally, in the same location again, run:

sudo dpkg -i wine-unstable*

Almost done!

Getting the gecko engine

At this point we’re 99% complete, we just need to launch winecfg and let it install the Gecko engine for web-browser shenanigans (again, you might not need this – but there’s no harm in it, and Wine’ll moan at you about it if you don’t). So just run:

winecfg

And when it prompts you about gecko, just click on [Install].

Ta-da!

New cutting-edge Wine goodness is now yours to play with, although from this point on you won’t get automatically updated as wine won’t be installed from any repository. For this reason, it’s worth holding onto all the debs so you can uninstall them with ease via a swift sudo dpkg -P *.deb (-P for purge) if at a later date you want to go back to the repo version.

As Bryant would say – Drink some for me, eh, pal?

Update: See the bottom of the post for another method of performing a upgrade install as a fresh install which only needs a single copy of your Windows 7 upgrade disc and nothing else!

Backstory

I’d had enough of fighting with OpenOffice 3.2 today and finally cracked: I bought a copy of Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Academic edition for $49AUD through Microsoft’s It’s Not Cheating program.

However, since I run Linux I thought I’d just get a copy of CrossOver and I’d be laughing, but this was not to be. I ponied up for Office, set it downloading, then went to get CrossOver only to find it only supports up to Office 2007 – and I don’t mean that Office 2010 won’t work 100%, or will be a little eratic – it won’t work at all. Feck!

Okay, so I can always run it through virtualisation (i.e. a VirtualBox or VMWare instance running some variety of Windows), but I didn’t fancy running the latest, greatest Office on a shonky old copy of XP, so I ponied up (again) for a copy of Windows 7 64-Bit Upgrade (that’s another $49AUD through It’s Not Cheating) and created a new virtual machine, installed Windows 7, entered the key at the end of the install, and it told me it wasn’t valid! Double feck!

At this point I’m $150AUD out of pocket with nothing to show for it, and am starting to furrow my brow.

Trying to deal with the key issue later – I just left the key out to get 7 up and running (it’ll go for 30 days without activation) and tried the key again from within the OS rather than from the installer; this time instead of just key invalid I got an error message stating that this key is not valid for a clean install of Windows… Okay.. now we’re getting somewhere – let’s fix this bad boy.

The Fix

There’s a bunch of stuff on the Web about forcing Windows 7 to accept a clean install from an upgrade disc by creating registry keys, running arcane commands (slmgr -rearm etc.), removing config files from the ISO before install etc. – and to be perfectly honest I didn’t fancy re-installing so I had a quick whirl at all of ‘em. And guess what? They didn’t work, so I’m not going to post them here. Instead I’ll tell you what worked for me [drumroll please....]:

Installing another version of Windows first.

No, really.

It doesn’t have to be 64-bit if you’re migrating 32-bit to 64, it doesn’t have to be one step below Windows 7 (i.e. Vista), it doesn’t even have to be a legal, valid version of Windows! It just has to be some incarnation of Bill’s Marvelous Blue-Screen Machine, and then when you install Windows 7 on top of the existing install, it’ll recognise a prior version of Windows existed, and your “upgrade” key will work perfectly.

Ba-da-bing Ba-da-BOOM! Shamone! =P

So in my case, this just meant slapping a copy of XP onto a new virtual machine, then the instant that’s finished installing, just changing over the ISO image mounted on the virtual DVD drive from XP to 7, rebooting, and letting this second version of Windows install.

Once you’ve got Windows 7 up and running, your “old” copy of windows will be sitting in C:\Windows.old, and you can either use the built-in Disk Cleanup tool to remove it or just delete that folder and you’re as good as new*.

* = If you’re doing a native Windows 7 install, once you’ve removed the old install then you’re quite literally good as new. If you’re installing on a virtual box using a hard drive which uses dynamic storage (i.e. you allocate, say, 60GB for the HD, but it doesn’t take up any space to begin with, it only takes up space when data is added to the drive) then the space allocated for the old Windows install can’t be fully recovered because dynamic disks can take up more space, but do not resize back down to take up less space when you remove data! But you’re going to put more than 700MB of additional stuff on it anyway, right? So just remove the old Windows install before installing new apps and the like and you’ll break even!

It’s not a glamorous hack or sneaky workaround, but it does work, and who doesn’t have an old copy of Windows sitting around somewhere? If you’re feeling particularly cheeky you could try it with a copy of Windows 3.1 or 95 installed and see if it still upgrades clean

Update: I was discussing this with some colleagues the other day who clued me in to the following rather sneaky (but perfectly legitimate) method of installing Windows 7 Upgrade as a “fresh install”:

1. Install Windows 7 as a fresh install and do not enter your key while installing.
2. From within your installed and running (but not activated) version of Windows 7, go to your Windows 7 disc and install it again!
3. If your Windows 7 Update disc doesn’t show setup type stuff (because it’s UDF and there’s all sorts of issues), just reboot the machine and install Windows 7 over Windows 7, um, dawg

Cheers!!

I used to upgrade my Ubuntu distros after each release cycle, but it was never a very pleasant experience… There’d always be mismatched packages and configs, legacy cruft left lying around filling up my root partition, and all sorts of mismatch woes – so I ditched that for separate partitions for my root folder and home folders, and now wipe the root folder with the newest release as and when it’s out.

Because I’ve done this a couple of times over the last few years, I feel I’m getting pretty good at getting the machine up & running with everything I need at a pretty fast pace: maybe a day for all the core stuff, another to tweak the vast majority of everything so I have it as I want, and then just bits and pieces as they come up. This time, I thought I’d make a list of all the things I install (yes, I know you can automatically generate a list of installed packages) – because I also wanted to note why I install ‘em, you know, what are they good for, so the next time I install a fresh system I can just grab it all even quicker.

Now, a stock/standard Ubuntu distro is a pretty good thing – but it doesn’t come with everything you need, so with that in mind, I’d like to present a list of things that I think you also need, and that once you have in place you’ll be able to do most anything you need with your system with just a few clicks. Before you do any of this, it’s a good idea to open up System | Administration | Software Sources and enable the restricted, universe and multiverse repositories as shown below:

With that done, here’s the list of things you’ll likely want to have installed in no particular-order, and only roughly sectioned off into classes (system, sound & media, social networking etc.):

There’s a few other things you might want which aren’t in the standard Ubuntu respositories, too. Such as:

You might not need some of that stuff, but for me it turns a good basic install into the real deal that does everything I need. And I absolutely love it

I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 64-bit the other day, and am still in the process of getting the system just-so – but in the process one of the things I did was install Nautilus Elementary, a modified version of the standard Nautilus file manager with extra-bits and pieces, only it hangs all the time when I browse my NAS – so it has to go!

As I’d installed it through a separate third-party PPA (this one – linked at the bottom of the page), it can be a pain to know what’s installed from what PPA when you want to go back to default Ubuntu repos – but there’s a quick-fix:

Go grab purge-ppa from here (link is again at the bottom of the page), and then run that bad-boy on the PPA where you want to remove all software from that PPA. In my case, that meant running:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:am-monkeyd/nautilus-elementary-ppa

Job done! PPA removed from sources list. All PPA software uninstalled. Original s/w restored! Now, because it’s nautilus in this case I just need to run nautilus -q to kill all running instances of the old elementary version, and I’m back in the game with the fully-working standard repo stuff. Mice! =D

Thanks to webupd8.org for all the good stuff – had never seen the site before, but am well impressed w/ all the neat new stuff they cover!

I went to clone a USB hard-drive onto another last night, and because VirtualBox USB throughput is pretty slow, and there was a couple of hundred GB to copy, I booted into Windows to do it. So far, so good. Only at some point during the night Windows decided to install some petty IE fix or some shit, and then proceeded to restart my box. Mid-clone. It probably put up a 15 minute warning saying I’m going to reboot your box unless you stop me, and then without any further input just did it.

That is just some of the most wrong-headed thinking I can possibly imagine. It’s basically saying: I don’t give a shit about anything you’re doing. I don’t care if you haven’t saved your files or you’re in the middle of something. I’m just gonna reboot. Because I want to. And I’m in charge, not you.

You can fix this default, and frankly rage-inducing, behavior as follows:

1.) Fire up the Group Policy Editor by going Start | Run | gpedit.msc

2.) Go to: Computer Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Windows Update and modify the No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates installations to Enabled

3.) Reboot for it to take effect. (How ironic )

It should be noted that if you’re on a domain, domain-level settings can override group policy ones, and that after the restart window will still pop up after updating Windows – it’ll just never reboot the machine without user confirmation that it’s okay to do so.

Oh, and if you’re on Vista Home Edition, you don’t even get group policy tools in the first place, in which case you can get busy with the registry as per this article – or use the registry file they provide, or just use this Auto Reboot Remover tool.