Jboss Hosting, Web Hosting Php - Php4, Php5 Programming Blog

PART 7 Keeping Your System Running

410 CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Summary In this chapter, we looked at how you can use the Wine project to install and run various Windows programs under Ubuntu, including Microsoft Office. Because using Wine is not without problems, we looked at how it should be configured, and then walked through the steps needed to install Microsoft Office 2000. Then you saw how to install other Windows programs. In Part 7 of the book, starting with the next chapter, we look at the techniques you need to know to keep your Ubuntu system running smoothly. Chapter 29 explains how to install Linux software.

CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Note I experienced a few weird bugs when running some Office programs. For example, the text in the Office Assistant dialog boxes didn t appear. I also found that the clipboard didn t work correctly when two or more Office applications were running (it seemed fine with just one application). You might encounter similar problems, but you should find that the key functions work. Installing Other Windows Programs A lot of Windows applications will install and work under Wine. Installing them is usually a matter of typing this: wine As I mentioned earlier, the Wine database (http://appdb.winehq.org) often details the best way to get Windows software working. Very nearly every mainstream Windows program can be made to work, although it may take a little extra effort. If there s a program that doesn t work, you can suggest it to the developers. The site contains a list of the top 25 programs that don t work, but which people would like to see up and running under Wine. In my tests, I managed to use Wine to install the popular WinZip archiving application, as well as the Winamp Lite audio software and Adobe Photoshop 6. Figure 28-4 shows each up and running. Figure 28-3. Although it sometimes takes a bit of effort, virtually any Windows application can be made to run under Ubuntu.

408 CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Running the Office programs is a matter of navigating to the /home//c/Program Files/Microsoft Office/Office folder and running the executables via Wine. For example, to run Microsoft Word on my system, I typed: wine /home/keir/c/Program Files/Microsoft Office/WINWORD.EXE To run Excel, you can type EXCEL.EXE. PowerPoint is POWERPNT.EXE, Access is MSACCESS.EXE, and Outlook is OUTLOOK.EXE. Don t forget that these must be typed in uppercase, because uppercase and lowercase matters in Linux. Figure 28-3 shows an example of running Word under Ubuntu. Figure 28-3. It s entirely possible to run Microsoft Word under Ubuntu. Just add a little Wine! Alternatively, you can easily create desktop shortcuts for your Office programs. See Chapter 10 for details on creating shortcuts. Aside from being a subdirectory within it, the dummy C: drive is entirely separate from your main file system, which is to say that no Windows programs will ever be installed outside this subdirectory. This should give you some peace of mind when it comes to threats from viruses and worms. In theory at least, only the files in this directory will be affected should you pick up an infection. (The Wine developers have theorized that a Windows virus running under Wine could infect your main system, but it would have to be created with knowledge that it might be running under Wine, and no such viruses have yet been found.)

CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Note The Wine programmers are constantly striving to make Wine compatible with all Windows software packages, but at the time of writing, Office XP and 2003 didn t work, although some people have reported moderate success. The Wine project has a database explaining which software packages work and which don t. Often, any tricks or tips others have used to make the software work are also detailed. You ll find the database at http://appdb.winehq.org. Follow these steps to install Office 2000: 1. Insert the Office 2000 CD, and then click on the GNOME Terminal window. 2. Mount the CD, switch to the /media/cdrom folder, and use Wine to run the Office setup program: mount /media/cdrom cd /media/cdrom wine SETUP.EXE 3. Work your way through the Office 2000 installation program as you would if you were running Windows. Select the default installation option. Installation didn t run perfectly smoothly on my test PC, although it may work fine for you. I received several errors messages, which I simply clicked through. At the end, the Office installation program seemed to be locked into a cycle of configuring itself. Eventually, it finished and presented the Office installer repair dialog box. I clicked to cancel this, and was then told that installation had failed. However, I found that Office 2000 had, in fact, installed perfectly. Another test I undertook resulted in error messages about Internet Explorer being split from the Windows Update process. In addition, the installation window was very small and the text within it largely illegible. However, I was able to work through the installation wizard by pressing Enter a few times. You may find it worthwhile to install the Microsoft Core Fonts package before installing Office; see Chapter 21. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Wine is something of a hack, so you may encounter some challenges. However, with a little common sense, you should be able to get Office 2000 onto your computer. Running Office Components In order to install programs, Wine creates an entire pseudo file system that mirrors a typical Windows hard disk. This is normally located in the hidden .wine directory in your system folder, but the Sidenet script you used to configure Wine will have placed it in your /home directory. Therefore, you should be able to browse to /home//c/Program Files to see a listing of all installed Windows software (replacing with your username).

406 CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU 9. At the end of installation, an Internet Explorer 6 window will open, informing you that the installation has finished. Closing this window will also end the script. 10. You can delete the wine-config-sidenetfolder, as well as any other files you downloaded. Note I saw an error dialog box about ieinfo5.ocx when installing Internet Explorer. Don t worry if you see the same thing, or even a handful of other errors. Chances are everything will still run smoothly. Showing Hidden Files on CDs You need to make one final change so that Wine can see hidden files on certain Windows CDs. This involves manually editing /etc/fstab, the configuration file that controls how and where file systems are mounted (fstab and mounting are covered in Chapter 15), to add the word unhide to the line relating to the CD-ROM within fstab. Here s the procedure: 1. Make sure the CD-ROM drive is unmounted. If you re browsing the CD, close the file window and make sure that any programs that might access the CD are closed, too. 2. Type the following at the GNOME Terminal command prompt: umount /media/cdrom 3. Load the fstab file into the Gedit text editor: sudo gedit /etc/fstab 4. Search for the line that contains the words /media/cdrom0 and add unhide just before the user,noauto entries in the Options column. The final line should look something like this: /dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 unhide,user,noauto 0 0 5. Save the file and quit Gedit. Installing Microsoft Office The best choice of Microsoft Office product to install is Office 2000. This has a proven record of installing and generally running well under Wine. It also uses file formats that are, for all practical purposes, unchanged in the more recent versions of Office (XP and 2003) and universally recognized in the business world.

CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU 405 5. Answer the prompts until you are offered the choice of the kind of Wine setup you want. Choose to manually install (this was option 3 on the version of Sidenet that I installed, but might be different for you). 6. You need to answer more questions about which programs you want to install. Answer Yes to each, and agree to create the C: folder in your /home directory. Note During installation of Sidenet, the Windows components you install might ask you to reboot. It isn t necessary for you to actually reboot Linux. Instead, a Windows reboot is faked within the Wine software (this is done automatically by Sidenet). You can do this yourself at any time from the GNOME Terminal window by typing wineboot. 7. Eventually, the DCOM98 installation window will appear. As you would within Windows, work through the options, agreeing to install the software. 8. Following this, the Internet Explorer installation program will download and then start. Again, work through the installer. Choose the Install Now . Typical Set of Components option. The program will load, as shown in Figure 28-2. Figure 28-2. The Sidenet script will download and install Internet Explorer and also configure vital Wine settings.

404 CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU Caution According to the wording of Microsoft s End User License Agreements, you can download and install the Windows components only if you have a valid Windows license. That s to say you can download Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player only if you own Windows XP, 2000, Me, 98, or 95. If you don t own these operating systems, then you ll be violating copyright laws. Also, you can install DCOM98, an additional component, only if you have a Windows 98 license; to do otherwise is to break copyright laws. Here are the steps for installation: 1. Open a web browser and go to http://sidenet.ddo.jp/winetips/config.html. From there, download the latest version of the Sidenet binary release. 2. When the download of Sidenet has finished, open a GNOME Terminal window (Applications . Accessories . Terminal) and type the following at the prompt (change the filename listed on the tar line to the match the name of the file you downloaded; these steps assume the file was downloaded to the desktop): cd ~/Desktop tar zxf wine-config-sidenet-1.9.0.tgz This will switch to where the download has been saved and unpack the downloaded archive into its own directory. 3. Download the following manually and place the downloaded files in the Sidenet directory you created earlier (on my system, this was wine-config-sidenet): DCOM98: www.microsoft.com/com/default.mspx Windows Installer add-in: www.microsoft.com/downloads/ release.asp?releaseid=32831 MFC 4.0 Runtime: www.softlookup.com/download.asp?ID=10315 The MFC 4.0 Runtime is supplied in a zip file. Open it with File Roller and extract all the contents of the zip to the Sidenet directory. Note The URLs for the additional Windows components were correct as this book went to press but it s possible that they may change. If that happens, searching the Web for the files in question should return ample download sites. 4. Once all the files are downloaded, click the GNOME Terminal window and type the following (this again assumes that you created the Sidenet directory in your desktop directory): cd ~/Desktop/wine-config-sidenet ./setup

CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU 7. Search for winetools and mark it for installation. 8. Click Apply. You ll be warned that some of the downloads you re about to install are not authenticated. However, in this case, you re downloading from a trusted location (http://sourceforge.net, in fact, the home of many key open-source projects). So it s safe to click Apply. 9. When Wine has downloaded and installed (it was around 15MB on my system), close the Synaptic Package Manager. CROSSOVER OFFICE The developers behind Wine also produce a proprietary version of Wine called CrossOver Office. Technically speaking, this is actually no different from any other version of Wine, except that a GUI-based front end is added to make installation of programs simpler. It also includes several scripts to overcome various incompatibilities between Windows programs and Wine. This makes it possible to install the very latest version of Office, for example. In addition, CrossOver Office also lets you use Internet Explorer-based plug-ins within Linuxbased browsers. You can learn more about CrossOver Office by visiting its official web site at www.codeweavers.com. CrossOver Office is available for a fee from CodeWeavers, but considering they are one of the major sponsors of the Wine project, this is an excellent way of investing in the community. Configuring Wine The Sidenet Wine Configuration Utility is a series of scripts by a third-party programmer (who isn t related to the Wine project) that automatically configures Wine so that it s much more compatible with current software. Sidenet automates the installation of Internet Explorer 6 and Windows Media Player 6.4 (you might find the versions numbers differ). It also tweaks the Wine configuration in a handful of ways to make it work with a lot of software. Note A script is a series of commands within a text file. By running the script, you work through the series of commands automatically. The Sidenet script can create several different types of Wine configuration. The first is a completely Microsoft-free Wine installation, which means that it won t install any Windows- based system files or Internet Explorer. The other options let you install Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player 6. This is strongly advisable, because many Windows programs demand the presence of these two programs (particularly Internet Explorer). Additionally, it s very useful to download several additional components that can then be installed using Sidenet.

402 CHAPTER 28 RUNNING MICROSOFT OFFICE UNDER UBUNTU 1. Select System . Administration . Synaptic Package Manager. Click Settings . Repositories. 2. Click the Add button, and then the Custom button in the dialog box that appears. In the APT Line field, enter the following (note the space inserted before binary/), as shown in Figure 28-1: deb http://wine.sourceforge.net/apt/ binary/ Figure 28-1. Getting the latest version of Wine ensures maximum compatibility with Windows programs. 3. Click the Add Repository button. 4. Click OK in the Software Preferences dialog box, and then agree to the reloading of package listings. 5. In the main Synaptic Package Manager window, click Search and enter wine as a search term. 6. In the list of results, look for the wineentry (this will simply be the word wine on its own, without any additional text). Click the check box, and then click Mark for Installation.