Wine has no kick

[imaginashawn2]

If the Wine we are talking about here was the drink, I should be sloshed by now ... but no luck.
I've tried installing wine to use for a few Microlimp programs for a couple years. I've never got it working!
The last couple weeks I've been trying to get it going on a 3Ghz 1GB machine running Ubuntu 12.04. When I installed it following the Wine HQ instructions (which still say to use ver. 1.4), my box starts freezing or crashing. If I uninstall it, my machine runs fine again. Wine seems to install ok (along with ppa and winetricks), but it wont install the two Popcap games I have on CD (brand new store bought). They don't require a license key or anything. I start the install, I get past the license agreement ... then the quit or install screen ... I click install, then the screen goes black. I've tried different video settings but that makes no difference.
To top it off. When I'm doing something totally different, like browsing the web, the computer crashes or freezes! If I remove Wine and all it's counter parts, the machine runs fine again.
I've talked to Wine HQ about it and of course, they want to blame it on Ubuntu and said I should work it out here. I told them; 'your right, they are pretty sharp over there, I guess I should have went there first!' lol.
I get the impression that people are able to sucessfully run Wine and programs on it but I can't figure out how.
So, I'm sharing my little hobby here if anyone is interested.

[Mark Phelps]

My own personal view of Wine is -- it's a desperate attempt to retain usage of MS Windows stuff without actually running the OS.

I spent 6 months struggling with Wine to get various apps working and eventually, gave up.

I need MS Office apps to support work I brought home and the features that didn't work made using it in Wine an exercise in frustration.

PLUS ... MS has seriously modified its middleware over the years to institute reliance on components that simply won't work with Wine. IF you're OK using something really OLD (like Office 2007), then you might be able to get by, but if you want anything current (like Office 2013, or IE 10), forget it -- Wine just won't work with those.

My advice is to double-boot, that way, you can continue to use both MS Windows apps and Linux distros.

[imaginashawn2]

Had a really hard time getting to a reply. This whole Ubuntu One log in thing is a real clustermuck! Sometimes people go too far with 'improving things'.
However Mark, I agree with you that Wine has not been developed enough. If it were up to me, I'd wait untill it was at least reasonably functional before offering it to the public.
I didn't start this thread to trash the name of Wine, I actually wanted to see if anybody could steer me in the right direction to getting it working ... but I'm starting to doubt weather it's just my lack of knowlege.
Thanks for the input.

[Bucky Ball]

The login change was not exactly to 'improve' user experience unfortunately. It was the result of a massive security breach which shutdown the forums for over a week, created bucket loads of work and headaches for staff, and problems for everyone, the repercussions of which are still being felt. This forced a change to a more secure login method.

Anyhow, Wine? I agree with Mark Phelps on this; a dual-boot or perhaps try Windows as a virtual machine inside Ubuntu by using Virtualbox is another option. This would avoid the rebooting situation when you wanted to get from one OS to the other. Good luck.

PS: Wine has been around for years and is no baby in development. This as good as it gets pretty much.

[imaginashawn2]

Thank you Bucky for the insteresting info on what happend to the login process.
On Wine, I myself have no use for it. I was trying to get it to work with a couple Popcap games for an old lady that has nothing better to do. I've decided to just install some Ubuntu games that are close to the same thing ... solved.
Thanks guys.

[Bucky Ball]

Good-o. Please mark thread as solved from Thread Tools at top right to help others. Cheers.

[RavenLX]

I've used PlayOnLinux successfully. It includes WineTricks and a good debugger. I have a tutorial on it here: <snip>

[Daliz]

I've been playing many games with Wine/PlayOnLinux so it's not at all useless. Actually it has dramatically decreased the amount of times I need to boot to Windows. It's mostly older games though, as I don't care much for most of the new ones.

[Bucky Ball]

@imaginashawn2: I took the liberty of marking it solved for you.

For all future new posters: Read post #5. Thread solved by OP. Please take Wine pros/cons/discussions to one of the many Wine threads discussing this stuff already. Cheers.