Windows Icons to Linux (converting)

[geazzy]

great tutorial

[novatotal]

This is an Update, I preserved the original below.

I found a much better method to make your Icons on Windows available on your Linux Box, and easier too. The prior method would disguise the .ico file as a .png, completely ignoring multiple layers hidden therein. This also made the .png impossible to edit in gimp. Well, I stumbled upon a much better way to have your icons converted. First we'll need icoutils.

sudo apt-get install icoutils

Icoutils contains four programs, the two most likely you'll use though are wrestool and icotool. Whatis reveals what these programs do

icotool (1) - Convert and create Win32 icon and cursor files
wrestool (1) - extract resources from Microsoft Windows(R) binaries (exe's and dlls) I assume ``extresso'' automates these tasks with the help of special resource scripts.

You can use icotool to see what types of icons are available in an .ico file:

icotool -l Emoticon.ico

You'll see a list like this:

--icon --index=1 --width=32 --height=32 --bit-depth=8 --palette-size=256
--icon --index=2 --width=16 --height=16 --bit-depth=8 --palette-size=256
--icon --index=3 --width=128 --height=128 --bit-depth=32 --palette-size=0
--icon --index=4 --width=48 --height=48 --bit-depth=32 --palette-size=0
--icon --index=5 --width=32 --height=32 --bit-depth=32 --palette-size=0
--icon --index=6 --width=16 --height=16 --bit-depth=32 --palette-size=0

In this case it showed six different sizes, I believe this is standard for XP (and Vista??).

If you want to extract all the icons in the .ico file and converts them to .png:

icotool -x -o . BootCamp_Drive.ico

This will extract the six icons listed above in Emoticon.ico. -x signifies extract while -o directs icotool to an output directory, in this case "." or the same directory.

You will notice that the eight bit depth icons won't carry a proper alpha layer and have a black layer about them. You probably won't need the eight bit depth icons and they dont' need to be extracted. To extract an entire directory ignoring eight bit icons cd into it and just do:

icotool -x --palette-size=0 -o /home/user/Desktop/seperate-directory *.ico

Ignoring the 256 colored (eight bit) icons, use the palette size of 0 to specify 24 bit and 32 bit. You also noticed it isn't a bad idea to use a separate output directory.

Thats is. Enjoy!

I know it is really late to be joining, but tried your tuto and got some errors; found a way around it and I'm posting it in order to help others.

This is the instruction that gave me problems and also the key to converting all the files:

icotool -x --palette-size=0 -o /home/user/Desktop/seperate-directory *.ico

The easy way is to open the terminal in the folder where you have your icons,

(sudo apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal)

Reboot your pc, and then open said folder and right click on an empty space inside it; open terminal here

then:

eduardo@eduardo-desktop:~/Escritorio/Alienware Breed$ icotool -x -o . *.ico

And presto! now all you have to do is use them.