Creating Windows Text Files in Ubuntu: How to Save as MS-DOS End-Of-Line in Gedit

A Quick Intro to End-Of-Line Conventions

Most people don’t realise that when they hit the Enter key to create a new paragraph in a text file, something very different is going on behind the scenes in the three major operating systems: Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The “end-of-line delimiter” (often expressed as “End-Of-Line“, “End of Line“, or just “EOL“) – which some of you know as the “line break” or “newline” – is a special character used to designate the end of a line within a text file.

UNIX-based operating systems (like all Linux distros and BSD derivatives) use the line feed character (\n or <LF>), “classic” Mac OS uses a carriage return (\r or <CR>), while DOS/Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line feed (\r\n or <CR><LF>). Now that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD‘s file system, it follows the UNIX convention.

Now, the reason most people don’t know about all this is because nobody really should have to. But while users of Linux distros and Mac OS can open Windows text files in basically any available editor and not even know the difference, the same can’t be said for Windows users opening files created in one of the other operating systems.

If you type up a simple text file in Ubuntu and save it in the default “Unix/Linux” format, in Windows it will appear as one continuous paragraph, with black squares where the line breaks (or new paragraphs) should be. While you can open the file in a more advanced text editor (or proper word processor) to view it as it should look, others you’ve sent it to are just likely to double-click it and let it open in Notepad (which can only handle MS-DOS EOL).

But you can save text files as Windows EOL easily with Gedit, as well as convert to that from UNIX via the terminal, so hopefully the following guide will be of use.

For more detailed info on End-Of-Line, go to the Wikipedia page.

And if you find the editor you’re using to display Windows files in Ubuntu shows ^M instead of a line break (not very likely with even the most lightweight text editors, but something you’ll probably come across if you display the text in a terminal), check out how to convert to Unix/Linux.

Saving Windows Text Files in Text Editor (Gedit)

It’s actually very easy to create text files with Windows EOL in Ubuntu using the default Text Editor, Gedit. When saving a file, go to Line Ending in the dialogue box and choose Windows instead of the default Unix/Linux. For files that were previously created, you can open them in Gedit and use Save As… to convert them (or save copies with the correct EOL).

As you can see, that’s pretty easy, but for more than one or two files, it is way too much work, so check out how to batch-convert multiple files via the terminal.

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Creating Windows Text Files in Ubuntu: How to Convert UNIX End-Of-Line to MS-DOS Format

A Quick Intro to End-Of-Line

Most people don’t realise that when they hit the Enter key to create a new paragraph in a text file, something very different is going on behind the scenes in the three major operating systems: Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The “end-of-line delimiter” (often expressed as “End-Of-Line“, “End of Line“, or just “EOL“) – which some of you know as the “line break” or “newline” – is a special character used to designate the end of a line within a text file.

UNIX-based operating systems (like all Linux distros and BSD derivatives) use the line feed character (\n or <LF>), “classic” Mac OS uses a carriage return (\r or <CR>), while DOS/Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line feed (\r\n or <CR><LF>). Now that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD‘s file system, it follows the UNIX convention.

Now, the reason most people don’t know about all this is because nobody really should have to. But while users of Linux distros and Mac OS can open Windows text files in basically any available editor and not even know the difference, the same can’t be said for Windows users opening files created in one of the other operating systems.

If you type up a simple text file in Ubuntu and save it in the default “Unix/Linux” format, in Windows it will appear as one continuous paragraph, with black squares where the line breaks (or new paragraphs) should be. While you can open the file in a more advanced text editor (or proper word processor) to view it as it should look, others you’ve sent it to are just likely to double-click it and let it open in Notepad (which can only handle MS-DOS EOL).

But you can save text files as Windows EOL easily with Gedit, as well as convert to that from UNIX via the terminal, so hopefully the following guide will be of use.

For more detailed info on End-Of-Line, go to the Wikipedia page.

If you’d like a more WYSIWYG approach, check out how to save and convert via Gedit.

And if you find the editor you’re using to display Windows files in Ubuntu shows ^M instead of a line break (not very likely with even the most lightweight text editors, but something you’ll probably come across if you display the text in a terminal), check out how to convert to Unix/Linux.

Converting Linux EOL to Windows via the Terminal

It’s easy enough to create new text files with Windows EOL in Ubuntu using the default Text Editor (Gedit), but what if you’ve created a whole bunch with the default Unix/Linux EOL and need to convert them for Windows users? Well, you can actually open them in Gedit and use Save As… to save over them (or to create copies), but for more than a couple of files this would be the long, complicated solution.

By far the quickest and easiest approach is to convert the offending files via the command-line. This way, you could batch-convert hundreds of such files at once, not have to do them individually.
There are actually quite a few ways to do this, but we’ll look at a couple of tiny packages you can install, and the related commands to use.

The first – the tofrodos package – is undoubtedly the most widely-used, so we’ll look at that in detail – especially since many of the guides out there are outdated, since the commands it contains have been renamed.

The second is a little package called flip, and since it’s tiny and won’t cause any issues, it’s worth installing as a backup (just in case. I found it useful after trying to get tofrodos going on a new system, before I found out the commands were changed).

There is no actual command tofrodos, as it is just the package that contains the commands todos and fromdos. Currently, the vast majority of online guides will list the commands as unix2dos and dos2unix, but as the developer states:

With this release the symlinks “unix2dos” and “dos2unix” are dropped from the package. This will allow the introduction of the original dos2unix package, which also supports conversion to MacOS style files.

So now you can choose to use either todos (to convert to Windows) and fromdos (to convert to Linux), or just fromdos with options (fromdos -u to convert to DOS, and fromdos -d to convert to UNIX, though obviously the -d option really isn’t needed, as it is the default behaviour for the fromdos command).

We’ll use todos, as it is easier to remember, and show how to alter a single file, or all text files in a given folder. When you’re ready to proceed, open a terminal in the folder containing the text file(s) and use one of the following commands (note that for the purpose of illustration, the .txt suffix is used, but you can specify any other extension for your text files).

To convert to DOS/Windows format:

Single file (remember to replace filename.txt with the actual name of the file)

todos filename.txt

All text files in a folder (if the extension differs to .txt, simply replace it in the command)

todos *.txt

Similarly, flip is easy to use:

flip -m filename.txt (or flip -m *.txt for multiple files).

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How to Convert Windows/DOS Text Files to Linux/UNIX Format

A Quick Intro to End-Of-Line

Most people don’t realise that when they hit the Enter key to create a new paragraph in a text file, something very different is going on behind the scenes in the three major operating systems: Windows, Macintosh and Linux. The “end-of-line delimiter” (often expressed as “End-Of-Line“, “End of Line“, or just “EOL“) – which some of you know as the “line break” or “newline” – is a special character used to designate the end of a line within a text file.

UNIX-based operating systems (like all Linux distros and BSD derivatives) use the line feed character (\n or <LF>), “classic” Mac OS uses a carriage return (\r or <CR>), while DOS/Windows uses a carriage return followed by a line feed (\r\n or <CR><LF>). Now that Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD‘s file system, it follows the UNIX convention.

Now, the reason most people don’t know about all this is because nobody really should have to. But while users of Linux distros and Mac OS can open Windows text files in basically any available editor and not even know the difference, the same can’t be said for Windows users opening files created in one of the other operating systems.

If you type up a simple text file in Ubuntu and save it in the default “Unix/Linux” format, in Windows it will appear as one continuous paragraph, with black squares where the line breaks (or new paragraphs) should be. While you can open the file in a more advanced text editor (or proper word processor) to view it as it should look, others you’ve sent it to are just likely to double-click it and let it open in Notepad (which can only handle MS-DOS EOL).

Occasionally, the reverse is the issue, but you can convert Windows text files to UNIX easily with Gedit, as well as convert them via the terminal, so hopefully the following guide will be of use.

For more detailed info on End-Of-Line, go to the Wikipedia page.

Or if you’re wanting to do the reverse, check out how to convert to Windows format via the terminal and with Save As… in Gedit.

Converting Windows EOL to Linux via the Terminal

If you find the text editor you’re using to display Windows files in Ubuntu shows ^M instead of a line break (not very likely with even the most lightweight text editors, but something you’ll probably come across if you display the text in a terminal), don’t worry – just convert them to Unix/Linux format.

While you can actually open them in Gedit and use Save As… to save over them (or to create copies) in the correct format, for more than a couple of files this would be the long, complicated solution.

By far the quickest and easiest approach is to convert the offending files via the command-line. This way, you could batch-convert hundreds of such files at once, not have to do them individually.
There are actually quite a few ways to do this, but we’ll look at a couple of tiny packages you can install, and the related commands to use.

The first – the tofrodos package – is undoubtedly the most widely-used, so we’ll look at that in detail – especially since many of the guides out there are outdated, since the commands it contains have been renamed.

The second is a little package called flip, and since it’s tiny and won’t cause any issues, it’s worth installing as a backup (just in case. I found it useful after trying to get tofrodos going on a new system, before I found out the commands were changed).

There is no actual command tofrodos, as it is just the package that contains the commands todos and fromdos. Currently, the vast majority of online guides will list the commands as unix2dos and dos2unix, but as the developer states:

With this release the symlinks “unix2dos” and “dos2unix” are dropped from the package. This will allow the introduction of the original dos2unix package, which also supports conversion to MacOS style files.

So now you can choose to use either todos (to convert to Windows) and fromdos (to convert to Linux), or just fromdos with options (fromdos -u to convert to DOS, and fromdos -d to convert to UNIX, though obviously the -d option really isn’t needed, as it is the default behaviour for the fromdos command).

We’ll use fromdos, as it is easier to remember, and show how to alter a single file, or all text files in a given folder. When you’re ready to proceed, open a terminal in the folder containing the text file(s) and use one of the following commands (note that for the purpose of illustration, the .txt suffix is used, but you can specify any other extension for your text files).

To Convert to UNIX/Linux via Terminal:

Single file (remember to replace filename.txt with the actual name of the file)

fromdos filename.txt

All text files in a folder (if the extension differs to .txt, simply replace it in the command)

fromdos *.txt

Similarly, flip is easy to use:

flip -u filename.txt (or flip -u *.txt for multiple files)

Converting Windows EOL to Linux with Gedit

It’s actually very easy to convert text files with Windows EOL to Unix/Linux in Ubuntu using the default Text Editor, Gedit. Simply open the files, choose Save As…, go to Line Ending in the dialogue box and choose Unix/Linux instead of Windows. While that is easy enough, for more than one or two you’d really want to save yourself some time and hassle and perform a batch-conversion via the terminal.

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How to Restore Your Windows Fonts in Ubuntu (Without Installing Them)

Whenever you freshly install an OS – be it Ubuntu or Windows – your previous collection of fonts can’t be expected to just suddenly appear there. But it’s really quick and simple to get them back, and you won’t even need to reboot before you can start using them.

All you will be doing is copying files from a source folder to a destination folder, which is just a basic bit of file management. First, locate your original fonts folder on your Windows partition, which should be C:\Windows\Fonts\. Next, you will need to create a hidden folder in your home folder on your Ubuntu partition, which you can do by entering the following command into a terminal:

mkdir ~/.fonts

If you’re wondering why a folder had to be created, especially since the system has fonts installed (so they have to be residing somewhere already), the short answer is just to make things easier for you. Fonts that come with the system, and a few that get installed by programs, are found in /usr/share/fonts – which, being a protected system folder, means you’ll need to ask for permission before you can do anything with it (like copy files into it).

The new .fonts folder, while being hidden (denoted by it starting with a period), is owned by you, so you can drag files in and out without being told you don’t have the appropriate permissions for that task. And of course Ubuntu will immediately recognise that you have a fonts folder of your own, and incorporate those with the ones already installed.

Once you have a folder window open for both source and destination, simply select your fonts and drag them from your Windows partition to the new fonts folder, and copies will be placed there. At this point, you can either choose to be selective, dragging over only those you will actually use from the collection that has accumulated over the years, or just select them all with Ctrl+A.

If you’re not sure about certain fonts, as filenames are shown, not font names, you can double-click those for a preview, then click the Install Font button at the bottom right.

Once you’re finished, the fonts are ready to use. If you had a word processor or similar open while doing this, the fonts won’t be recognised yet, so simply close and reopen it, and you’ll see all your fonts there. Note that this will also work with Windows programs running under Wine, meaning next time you run Adobe Photoshop or what have you, all the fonts accessible in Ubuntu will be available to it.

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If you’d like to do all this the easiest way – via the terminal – a command like the following will do the trick:

mkdir ~/.fonts && cp -rT /media/Windows/Windows/Fonts/ ~/.fonts

You will probably need to change the path of the source, depending on where it is mounted (in this example, it assumes your Windows partition is mounted as /media/Windows). Also, if there are spaces in the path (like if the mount point is /media/Windows XP), you will need to enclose that path in single quotes, and make note of any case issues (if C:\Windows is actually C:\WINDOWS, you will need to put it as such). Here is a revised command taking all those into consideration:

mkdir ~/.fonts && cp -rT '/media/Windows XP/WINDOWS/Fonts/' ~/.fonts

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How to Show Hidden Files & Folders

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How to Extract Icons from EXE Files (Windows Programs) as PNGs for Wine Launchers in Ubuntu

If you’ve ever installed any Windows programs in Ubuntu, you’d know Wine takes care of extracting the program’s icon (usually in the ancient .ico format) for use in Ubuntu. But, for whatever reason it may be, you may need to recreate those, but you don’t have the reinstall your programs just to do so.

In my case, copying over the entire .wine folder to a freshly-installed system gave me all my old Windows programs in perfect working order (gotta love Linux!), but the launchers no longer have the familiar icons. While I copied over a hidden folder with panel launchers, I’d have to do some digging in my old system to restore those icons to what they were, but probably a less time-consuming answer would be to just extract those icons, have them converted to .png, and put them somewhere safe for use with the associated program.

Another scenario for why you would want to extract icons is that the default icon for one of your programs is horridly pixellated, yet you know the .exe actually contains a bunch of higher resolution icons, and wish to change it to one of those, simply to make it look better.

Now, there are a bunch of apps available for this, mostly command-line solutions but a few little GUI apps as well, but the easiest to use is gExtractWinIcons. All you have to do is open a resource file (like an executable .exe or .dll library), pick a destination to save to, select the desired icon(s) for extraction, and click Save.

If the file contains a lot of images, click Deselect All, and manually mark those you want for extraction. Once you’re finished, move your icons somewhere safe, and assign them to your Wine programs’ launchers.

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Fix “Blocked: wine start /unix” Error Trying To Run Windows .EXE Files (Programs) in Ubuntu Linux

Here is a Wine “error” that appears to be fairly new, and if you’ve been upgrading your system (and Wine along with it), you probably haven’t encountered it yet. However, if you’ve recently installed Ubuntu (10.04 – not sure if this affects any earlier versions), you would have noticed it won’t let you run any Windows .exe files:

Blocked: wine start /unix
The file ‘/home/user/Downloads/program_name.exe’ is not marked as executable. If this was downloaded or copied form an untrusted source, it may be dangerous to run. For more details, read about the executable bit.

If, like me, you decided to do a fresh install, but copied your old .wine folder over so all your Windows programs work as they had in the old system you’ve migrated from, you probably have no problems opening those previously installed, only new .exe files that Wine hasn’t dealt with before.

But this isn’t a bug or an error, just an overly-cautious default setting, and it is actually really easy to disable. Open a terminal and enter the following command:

gksu gedit /usr/share/applications/wine.desktop

Located the line Exec=cautious-launcher %f wine start /unix and change it to Exec=wine start /unix %f

Save and exit the file, and Wine will now behave as you want when it comes across new Windows programs.

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If you prefer to leave this cautious setting as the default, you can always exclude individual Windows programs or, rather, bypass this security measure for individual .exe files. Simply right-click the .exe file in question, select Properties, and in the Permissions tab check “Allow executing file as program“. Click Close and that particular .exe will open as normal when you double-click it.

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Make GRUB (Legacy) Boot Into Your Windows System by Default Instead of Ubuntu

Please note that this is for the “legacy” version of GRUB still widely in use, not the next-generation GRUB 2. If unsure, check out this guide on how to find out which version of GRUB you are using.

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You can make GRUB boot to an operating system other than Ubuntu, like Windows, by simply editing a bit of text. Open menu.lst for editing as superuser by pasting the following into a terminal:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

and near the top you should see:

default         0

You will need to change the “default” value from “0” (zero) to the number of the Windows entry, which should be near the bottom of the file and look like:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title        Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
root        (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader    +1

Noting that the default entry (Ubuntu) is “0” not “1”, simply count the entries at the bottom of menu.lst, and deduct 1 from the value of the Windows drive/partition.

In other words, if your GRUB menu has the four basic options (Ubuntu, Ubuntu Recovery Mode, Memtest+, and Windows), then your Windows drive is the fourth option, so the “default” value should be “3”. Obviously, if your boot menu has some earlier kernels still listed, and altogether there are 8 entries with Windows as the last, then the value would be “7“. As I said, simply count the entries at the bottom of menu.lst (they should all look similar to the Windows one) and deduct one from it (assuming Windows is the last entry, of course).

Close and save menu.lst and GRUB will automatically boot Windows from then onwards. You can of course still choose another OS like Ubuntu at the boot menu before the countdown finishes.

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Related Guides:

Make GRUB (Legacy) Automatically Boot to the Last Used Operating System

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Differences Between Hard Drives & Media Storage Devices in Ubuntu & Windows

Here’s some basic info for those wanting to make the move to Ubuntu or another Linux distro. Once you get your head around the folder structure differences to what you’re used to in Windows, you’ll see it’s all quite easy. Basically, you just need to get familiar with some basic concepts like “mount points” and “privileges” (or “permissions”), and remember that while paths (or addresses) in Windows contain \ (backslashes), in Linux it is like the internet, so / (slashes) are used.

Mount Points

Hard drives are not represented as “C:” and “D:” like in Windows, as they are actually accessed from folders serving as “mount points”. So, in effect, other drives, including your DVD drive, are seen as folders in your Ubuntu system, not as separate drives. While the root of a CD or DVD in Windows would be represented as D:\, in Ubuntu and other Linux distros, it would be something like /media/cdrom0 (mount points will vary, but generally found in either /mnt or /media, depending on your distro or Ubuntu version).

The User Folder

In Windows, they’ve increasingly made it difficult to locate your files without using their shortcuts. Back in Windows 95, most of your stuff could be found in C:\My Documents, but by XP it had changed to C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents. With Vista it changed yet again, this time to C:\Users\YourName\Documents, and will no doubt keep users guessing with each upgrade.

In Ubuntu and most Linux distros, you can always count that every file you own is located in a folder within /home. All other users of the computer will also have their own subfolder within it, and only the owner of each can view and edit files therein. Your documents will be in /home/yourusername/Documents, pictures in /home/yourusername/Pictures, videos in /home/yourusername/Videos, music in /home/yourusername/Music, and so on.

Also, most programs will store their configuration files in hidden subfolders of your user folder. While some settings files will occasionally be in system folders, generally they’ll be in folders like /.mozilla-thunderbird (the . before marks it as a hidden folder, which you won’t see in Nautilus – the default file manager – unless you enable the displaying of hidden files and folders).

System Folders & Permissions

The root of your Ubuntu drive or partition is /, and most of the subfolders belong to the system, or root. In fact, besides the /home and /tmp folders, the rest is controlled by root, so you do not have permission to edit, move, create or delete files in those folders. For that, you need to either log in as root (not recommended), or become the super-user to achieve your goals.

Most people don’t need to go poking in the guts of the system, and as for tweaking programs by manually editing config files, as I mentioned most programs keep all that in your user folder, so you can edit and delete those without need for root privileges.

Filesystems

You’ll see that while Windows does not even recognise a Linux or Mac OS partition, in Ubuntu you can not only access your Windows and Mac drives (and other Linux partitions), but easily write to them as well. This means that if you have a Windows installation, you can access files from that drive while in Ubuntu, and even edit and save them back there. So you can get to all your pictures, etc, without having to reboot, and many file-types will open in compatible programs in Ubuntu (eg: .doc files will open fine in OpenOffice.org Writer).

Devices

Ubuntu is much better with the array of different media storage devices out there than its counterpart. For example, while Windows can handle most devices connected via USB, most versions cannot recognise a drive has been connected via eSATA. Trying to find a way to get eSATA support in XP proved a long and unrewarding process (ie: a big waste of time), while that support is just built into Ubuntu.

Basically anything that can be connected to a computer and has some kind of storage capacity can be accessed in Ubuntu. Don’t be surprised if some devices that need drivers and software in Windows are mounted in Ubuntu without need for anything.

And if you’ve had USB sticks suddenly lose most of their capacity in Windows, and formatting them there did nothing (or actually made it worse), try wiping them in Ubuntu, as I’ve fixed a couple that way!

Drive/Partition Paths

If you’ve ever fiddled with the Windows boot menu or looked at partition information for some reason, you would know that the paths or addresses are actually quite long and complicated compared to the C: you see in My Computer.

In Linux, they’re short and pretty straight forward, which you can see if you open Gnome Partition Editor (sudo apt-get install gparted if you haven’t already got it). Your drives will have names like sda or hda (depending on hardware and Ubuntu version), and the “a” represents the first drive (or Primary Master, if you have older IDE drives). Therefore, your second drive would be sdb/hdb, and other drives would follow in alphabetical order.

Similarly, the partitions start with “1“, so the first partition on the first drive would be /dev/sda1, while the fifth partition on the third drive would be /dev/sdc5, and so on.

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For more information on working with devices and partitions in Ubuntu, like finding out UUIDs via the terminal, through to a great graphical disk usage analysis program you can use, check out this page.

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Get Windows Explorer in Ubuntu with Thunar File Manager

Thunar is the default file manager for Xubuntu‘s Xfce desktop environment, and is as stable in Ubuntu as the default app, Nautilus (especially since Xfce uses a lot from Gnome anyway). In many ways, you can’t tell the two programs apart, but for a time Thunar was way ahead of Gnome‘s file manager. That’s not just because of advanced features like custom actions you could add, but because of the various views you could have. For example, for newbies tentatively moving away from Windows, the Tree view in the side pane is assuringly similar to Windows Explorer.

While Nautilus has certainly caught up, with being able to add to context menus via actions, and 6 different views for the side pane, Thunar is still worth installing because you can get the best of both worlds. You can leave Nautilus with the Places pane on the left and “Icon View” (thumbnails) on the right, and for when you want to browse via a Tree pane with “Compact List” icons (“List View” in Windows Explorer), you can open Thunar.

Also, unlike with Nautilus, you can still access the defined shortcuts (usually available via the left pane) while in Tree view by clicking a button at the end of the address bar. If you are thinking Thunar might be good to have as a backup in case Nautilus is having problems (which it is), but prefer it to look like Nautilus, then you can always change things back to how you like them (change the Tree pane to Shortcuts).

If you like this idea, but are thinking the icons in “Compact List” view are too small, you can always make them bigger (seen above), via the View menu, or zoom with your scroll wheel.

If you look at the pics, you’ll see some minor differences between the two file managers. Firstly, while Thunar uses the same icons for toolbar buttons that Nautilus does (they both get them from the current icon theme), Thunar‘s are bigger (which I personally like). You’ll also note from the second pic that in your home folder (and elsewhere), hidden folders and files are listed first.

Other things worth mentioning are the differences between thumbnails and folder settings between the two, and that the Thunar context (right-click) menu will probably have less entries than you’re used to (though you should get “Open Terminal Here“ by default, while with Nautilus you have to install a package to get “Open in Terminal“).

Lastly, since the Information pane in Nautilus is rather useless right now when it comes to info, you can use Thunar to get more info at a glance than Nautilus can offer. For example, when you’re in your ~/Pictures folder and what to know the size in pixels of certain images, you generally need to right-click each file and view the info via Properties > Image. But with Thunar, all you have to do is click each file and look at the bottom to the info displayed on the status bar (which can be enabled via the View menu if it is missing).

So you could even do what I did: set up Thunar to display over-sized icons in “Icons” view, and then create a panel launcher to have your ~/Pictures folder open in Thunar (the command for such a launcher would be: thunar /home/yourusername/Pictures). That way, you don’t have to mess with icon size in Nautilus, but still get really large thumbnails of all your pictures, as well as info on dimensions presented in the status bar.

To install Thunar, as well as select some plugins for installation, simply search for “thunar” in Synaptic. Or you can install the program and all related plugins via the terminal:

sudo apt-get install thunar thunar-media-tags-plugin thunar-volman thunar-thumbnailers thunar-archive-plugin

To get more info about the plugins, simply paste their names (individually) into the Quick search field in Synaptic.

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WINE: Running Windows Programs & Games in Ubuntu

Wine is what most look upon as a Windows emulator, though the developers prefer Windows compatibility layer. And that’s for a good reason, as Wine is a lot more seamless than you would expect of an emulator. And this isn’t virtualisation, where you run a Windows “virtual machine” inside Ubuntu, in effect running two operating systems at once. Wine makes it possible to run many Windows programs as though they were “native”, meaning just like any other Linux programs in Ubuntu.

While the programs will look as they do in Windows, they’ll be themed by Ubuntu (the window borders and titlebars), including desktop effects like window wobble. Like I said, they’ll pretty much be like any other Ubuntu programs, but might take a few seconds longer to load than in Windows.

Wine sets up a fake C: drive within its own folder, but you can browse through your entire system when importing or saving files in your Windows apps. You can even configure Wine to assign drive letters to commonly-used folders in your home folder, thereby making it simple to browse to them when opening or saving files.

Wine is easily installed via Synaptic, but you will need to enable “universe” and “multiverse” repos first.

Visit WineHQ for more general info, or check out the database of Wine programs (the list of popular games that run in Ubuntu is quite impressive). For those who want the latest available beta packages, you can find detailed info on how to add the WineHQ APT Repository for different versions of Ubuntu.

And remember: if you are having problems getting a certain program to run, or run without errors, join WineHQ and submit a bug report. It can be well worth the effort, as I have had Wine updates come out two days later with the fix I needed for programs like DVD Shrink.

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Did this information make your day? Did it rescue you from hours of headache? Then please consider making a donation via PayPal, to buy me a donut, beer, or some fish’n’chips for my time and effort! Many thanks!

Buy Ubuntu Genius a Beer to say Thanks!

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