Windows PortableApps under WINE

[Mike Walsh]

Whoa, it's been a looong time time since I last visited this thread...

I'm re-visiting because I just want to mention a PortableApp that's fixed a very long-standing problem for me. And it shows, I feel, the difference in the way that support is proffered to both Windows and Linux.

I've ALWAYS had issues with recording audio on the big old Compaq tower, since switching to Puppy. I had no problems before that with Ubuntu, nor before that in XP. I've largely got around the problem (certainly for doing tutorials) by using a Logitech USB headset with its own built-in sound card. But for recording through the webcam, or recording from the system via 'dmix', it still comes out sounding all slow, and 'treacly'. It doesn't matter what I use; Audacity, mhWaveEdit, whatever.....through these two inputs, the result is always the same.

Which is why I was extremely pleased to find

Audacity 'portable'

Using this, I can just record whatever I want, whenever I want.....and it always comes out sounding perfect. (This is running under an external, sym-linked install of Wine 3.3; mikeslr's 'favourite', I believe, for just 'working'. It certainly does for me.)

Windoze stuff seems to always get the lion's share of the development pie. Linux, as the 'poor' relation, never gets much more than the 'crumbs' of an afterthought.....

Typical, ain't it?


Mike.

[davids45]

G'day,

Just a follow-up to my earlier posts in this thread - I have the Portable Wine 3.3 version from mikeslr running in recent 32-bit Pups and also with recent 64-bit Bionic ans ScPups.

The Portable Wine directory is in my data drive for the appropriate Pups and runs from a pinboard link in each Pup.

Still 'early days' for me with this, but I have used the setup.exe program to install the Windows program into the Portable Wine where needed then run from the drop-down list in the Portable Wine dialog box.

I will try pinboard links from the exe to the pinboard to run preferred Windows packages in a single click.

I'll try a few Portable Applications next although my main use is of 'commercial' Windows packages so doubt they'll appear in the Portable format.

Where I also have 'normal' Wine from version2013 via an sfs (4.0 linked to the data partition), both Wines seem so far to run without interference to the non-running other.

Thanks to both Mikes for this.

David S.

[davids45]

G'day,

I have a MultiPup USB with about half a dozen Pups (32-bit and 64-bit).

Running a Puppy or several from this USB, where should the WinePortable directory go?

I'd like to access the Portable Wine from each Pup on the CD.

I have a Portable Wine set up with installed Windows programs on my desktop's data partition. Can this directory be copied to somewhere on the USB to save me a little time?

First try copying this to the root directory of the USB; with a click, it opens but tells me there is no wine environment and to create one, the default location was (I think) inside the particular Pup not in the Portable Wine directory itself.

And if one of the MultiPups is installed to a hard-drive, what would be needed to add the Wine? Start afresh or a clever copy somewhere?

Or is a 'traditional' Wine sfs or pet the easier way?

Thanks for any help.

David S.

[Mike Walsh]

Morning, David.

Right. Now then.....

This thread was supposed to be about running Windows PortableApps under WINE. PortableWine is a somewhat different beast altogether, though I'll see if I can help, of course.

Mikeslr is actually our resident 'expert' on PortableWine, because he runs it all the time, from what I understand. The one thing I do know is this; even if you're sharing a single, PortableWine install between multiple Puppies, AFAIK you still need to right-click on PortableWine and 'register' it with each Puppy. This then adds all the relevant Menu entries, and makes it so that Puppy knows WINE is now 'installed'.....okay?

My personal 'workaround' for this, since I'm not very keen on the way PortableWine does things, was slightly different.

---------------------------------------

I took one of version2013's WINE .pets (3.3 v2_1, in my case), extracted it, and basically put the entire thing within its own, dedicated directory on an externally-mounted drive. I then built a .pet that sym-linked every single item into each Puppy at the points where Pup would expect to find them (takes a wee while to build, because there's a lot of items, y'know?) The beauty of this is that, once WINE has been set-up in one Puppy, it then just 'works' in every other Puppy that you use the 'sym-link' .pet to 'install' it to.....and it works really well, David.

The two directories that really need keeping outside of Puppy-space are the /usr/lib32 directory - this is where the 1000+ Windows .dlls live - and the /root/.wine directory itself, since this is where all the programs/apps live. When you're running a few of the text-to-speech apps, along with half-a-dozen or so of the freely-available AT&T 'NaturalVoices' (500MB+ each, natch), the /root/.wine directory can rapidly grow to several GB in size!

Following a request from Mikeslr, I had a go at putting together a script to 'externalize' the relevant, large parts of a WINE install; copying the directories in question, followed by deleting the originals, then sym-linking the copied items back to their original locations. Worked nicely, too. If you're interested in looking at it, I've attached it to the bottom of this post.

The other advantage of this is that if you have the room for whatever you have 'installed' with WINE, you can simply copy this directory across to your USB. You will, of course, need to re-build your sym-links .pet for the new locations.

I can't help wondering whether it might be possible to make use of the 'readlink' '$HERE' variable stuff that I use in the portable, Chromium-based browser builds I've done recently.....and modify the script accordingly? I 'borrowed' this from Fred's original portable 'take' on FF Quantum, and have used it in a lot of items since..... It ought to be feasible if you're keeping things self-contained on a single USB drive, I would imagine.

(One question; do you run all your USB Pups from sub-directories in a single main directory? If you do, that would make this a hell of a lot simpler; I ought to be able to modify the script so that you just copy both the 'external WINE' directory and the script itself, and just place them in the relevant locations. It's got to be worth a try, anyway.)

Let me know what ya think. We'll take it from there if you want to.....


Mike.