Using Wine to replace Window$

PixelPixie

It's been 6 weeks since I've made the leap from the Redmond bloatware to Linux and I have no regrets. My two office machines are now running RH9 only.


I'm still stuck with Window$ XP (Home) on my laptop. Only thing stopping me from dumping that too in favour of Linux (not necessarily RH) is that my accounts package (TAS Books 2) only runs on Windows.
My question is this - is Wine sufficiently mature to run TAS Books? Anyone on this list have any opinions/ideas? I've checked Wine on the web, and it apparently runs other progs I often use such as Dreamweaver MX, Paint Shop Pro 8, and Flash, but there is no mention of accounts packages.
I should mention that I'm in the newbie category still.

P.

Red Alert

Try Codeweavers.com they have a thing called CrossOverOffice for sale which is an extended version of Wine which is designed to support productivity applications like Office etc. Check their supported apps list - TAS might be on it.

Fenster

Or you could always try Linux alternitives to TAS Books...

Red Alert

GNUCash may fit the bill. I think there are preconfigured packages available for RH9 - it's a killer package once you get the hang of it, but alas I use slackware on my server and it seems quite difficult to configure on it.

http://www.gnucash.org/

i think is the address.

davmigil

I tried about 1 yr ago to get TAS Books 1 working under Wine. I couldn't get past the installer! Gave up and stuck with dual-booting. Interested to see if anybody has got it working.
It's a big sticking point for many people. Alternatives are fair enough if you are starting from scratch, but without the facility to import your accounts data into these packages you are in a bind too. Also being able to hand an accountant the floppy disks v.handy (maybe some of the other packages can save in a commonly recognised file format?).

nadir

I use wine a good bit, and it works for the most part, but it's hassle, it breaks an it can be a pain to fix.

PixelPixie

Fenster wrote:

Or you could always try Linux alternitives to TAS Books...

That's not really an option I'm afraid as I have 5 years+ of company accounts in TAS. I've also read somewhere that the accounts packages on Linux are poor.

PixelPixie

Red Alert wrote:

Try Codeweavers.com they have a thing called CrossOverOffice for sale which is an extended version of Wine which is designed to support productivity applications like Office etc. Check their supported apps list - TAS might be on it.

I'll have a look at Codeweavers and let you know how I get on, tnx.

PixelPixie

davmigil wrote:

I tried about 1 yr ago to get TAS Books 1 working under Wine. I couldn't get past the installer! Gave up and stuck with dual-booting.

Not good. Hopefully I'll have more luck.

davmigil wrote:

It's a big sticking point for many people. Alternatives are fair enough if you are starting from scratch, but without the facility to import your accounts data into these packages you are in a bind too. Also being able to hand an accountant the floppy disks v.handy (maybe some of the other packages can save in a commonly recognised file format?).

You've hit the nail on the head, davmigil.

PixelPixie

nadir wrote:

I use wine a good bit, and it works for the most part, but it's hassle, it breaks an it can be a pain to fix.

I was hoping to avoid having to dual-boot, but if I have to...
I think I'll try out wine on one of the towers and see if I can get TAS to work on that. And then take it from there.

PixelPixie

Red Alert wrote:

GNUCash may fit the bill. I think there are preconfigured packages available for RH9 - it's a killer package once you get the hang of it, but alas I use slackware on my server and it seems quite difficult to configure on it.

Ya, I've heard about GNUCash, Red Alert, and it's on my machine. But changing to this is not really an option for reasons outlined elsewhere on this thread.

Capt'n Midnight

If TAS is not processor intersive you could setup an older box with no keyboard/mouse and RealVNC on it. Set the poll options to to poll the current window etc. and XVNC into it.

Or could you install it on windows 98 and then copy program files and the reg over to folders on the NIX box and run from there, bypassing the install program..

niallb

Like Davmigil I tried to install TAS a few months back under wine, and had great
trouble with the installer. This was a wine installation that was running IE6 with
no major defects.
If your machine is fast enough, and TAS's requirements are reasonable, you could try
installing qemu (http://bellard.org/qemu).
An upgrade of wine to a precompiled package broke my setup, and I still need to
run IE6 every few months to check what it's doing to websites.
Rather than go through the wine procedure again, I installed qemu,
set up a virtual disk and installed my old copy of win98 on it.
It runs like an old pentium, but it runs smoothly.

IE6 is one of the only apps I've run on it, but it does a good job.
vmware is probably much faster, but it's not free and it might be overkill.
I'll install TAS on it later in the week and get back to you if you haven't got yourself sorted.

Good luck,
NiallB

PixelPixie

niallb wrote:

[SNIP]
If your machine is fast enough, and TAS's requirements are reasonable, you could try
installing qemu (http://bellard.org/qemu).

Rather than go through the wine procedure again, I installed qemu,
set up a virtual disk and installed my old copy of win98 on it.
It runs like an old pentium, but it runs smoothly.

I've had a quick look at qemu's website. I think I'll give it a try and see if I can get TAS working on it. Won't get round to this till the weekend at the earliest as there are other more pressing matters like deadlines to look after.
Thanks for the help, niallb. I'll let you know how I get on.

PP

oscarBravo

Playing with qemu now - my PC doesn't have a floppy drive, so I wonder could someone do me a favour? I need a floppy image for a Win98 boot floppy. All the downloads presume that (a) you're running Windows and (b) you have a floppy drive. Would anyone be able to dd a boot floppy to a .img file for me?

Ta!

paulinimus

Im glad to hear you are making the switch to Linux - welcome to stability!
About TAS. I dont know how good it is on WineX but I would wait until December 7th (date is correct I think). That is the date for the next major release of WineX - Cedea 4.2 I believe. I'll be downloading it : )
Included this release are more bug fixes and complete support for half life 2 and Steam!! Make sure you use the latest and greatest WineX is what Im trying to say.

Hope it all works out and you consider a long distance plan to migrate away from TAS if possible...

I only use Linux and have no plans to use Windows (at least thats my official position!)

oscarBravo

oscarBravo wrote:

my PC doesn't have a floppy drive

's cool, blew the dust off my old Vaio's USB floppy.

Installed Win98 on qemu, install finished successfully and now it bluescreens every time it boots. Ah well. Might try win2k.