Windows on Linux: Run Win Apps on PCQLinux 2004

We have included the latest WineX in PCQLinux 2004, which allows you to run Windows apps. When you install the desktop option in PCQLinux 2004, WineX is automatically installed. You can now install and run lightweight Windows apps by just double clicking on the installer file. Of course, you need to mount the installer CD first. We also managed to run MS Office 97 on PCQLinux 2004. In this article, we will see how you can run MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint 97 from the PCQLinux desktop. 

Your user account will be used to configure WineX and to run the Windows apps. WineX only works with normal user accounts and does not work with administrative accounts, such as root. 

Once you have logged in as a user, right click on the desktop. This will bring up a drop-down menu. Select Open New Terminal. In the terminal window that will appear, type Winexsetup. This will bring up a GUI front end to configure WineX. Click on Next>Next>Finish. This will create a hidden folder in the user’s home directory, with a virtual Windows environment. Now, you are ready to use WineX to emulate Windows for running apps. Now isn’t that as easy as any setup could get?

Once you mount your Windows app CD, WineX uses a wine-glass icon for the EXE files in it. This means that that file can be run on your system.

To install any new app, simply mount the installer CD and click on the executable (EXE) installer file. You can choose the path, where you want to install the app. By default, the apps get installed in /home//.wine/fake_windows/Program Files. After installation, you can run the Windows apps by clicking on the executable file from the location, where you have installed it. Remember that it will have a Wineglass icon. You can even create shortcut links of the executables on the desktop. 

Running MS Office 97 

Linux users generally use Cross Over office to run Microsoft Office on their desktops. But, you can also use wineX to run MS Office 97 on PCQLinux 2004 with a small trick. Note that this still requires a valid license for MS Office. You cannot run MS Office or any other commercial software on Linux without having the appropriate license for it. For MS Office, you need a valid license for each copy that you install and run.

Mount the MS Office 97 CD on your Linux machine and explore the CD. You will find a folder called Office in the CD; copy this folder to the /home/ folder. When you open this Office folder, you will get executables for winword.exe (MS Word), EXCEL.EXE (MS EXCEL) and POWERPNT.EXE (MS PowerPoint). Click on the mentioned, executable that you want to run. It will give a dll error; just ignore the error by closing the error window. MS Office apps will run fine without any problem, except a few tools will be missing in the tool bar. They are available in the menus.

Printing 

Configuring printing from wineX is a task in itself. Please refer to www.witch.westfalen.de/Wine-HOWTO/wineprintconfig.html for detailed steps.

Sanjay Majumder